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THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ■ DALLAS 
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE SONG OF 
THREE FRIENDS 



BY 

JOHN G. NEIHARDT 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS" 

"THE gUEST," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

^11 rights reserved 



J-. A 






Copyright, 1919, 
Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1919, 



J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Maas., U.S.A. 



FEB 26 1919 



^^^ 



'Jp 



TO HILDA 

Olov TO yXvKVfiaXov ipcvOcTat aKpco in ucrSw 
aKpov CTT oLKpoTaTio ' XeXdOovTO 8k fjuiXoSpoTnjes, 
oi fxav iKXiXadovr'f aXX' ovk tSvvavr' iiriKecrOai. 



NOTE 

The following narrative, though complete in 
itself, is designed to be the first piece in a cycle 
of poems dealing with the fur trade period of 
the Trans-Missouri region. "The Song of Hugh 
Glass," which was published in the fall of 191 5, 
is the second in the series. 

The four decades during which the fur trade 
flourished west of the Missouri River may be re- 
garded as a typical heroic period, differing in no 
essential from the many other great heroic periods 
that have made glorious the story of the Aryan 
migration. Jane Harrison says that heroic char- 
acters do not arise from any peculiarity of race 
or even of geographical surroundings; but that, 
given certain social conditions, they may and do 
appear anywhere and at any time. The heroic 
spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, we are told, is the 
outcome of a society cut loose from its roots, of 
a time of migrations, of the shifting of popula- 
tions. Such conditions are to be found during 
the time of the Spanish conquests of Central and 



viii NOTE 

South America; and they are to be found also 
in those wonderful years of our own West, when 
wandering bands of trappers were exploring the 
rivers and the mountains and the plains and the 
deserts from the British possessions to Mexico, 
and from the Missouri to the Pacific. 

As a result of our individualistic tendencies, 
our numerous jostling nationalities, and our 
materialistic temper, we Americans are prone 
to regard the Past as being separated from us as 
by an insurmountable wall. We lack the sense 
of racial continuity. For us it is almost as though 
the world began yesterday morning; and too 
much of our contemporary literature is based 
upon that view. The affairs of antiquity seem 
to the generality of us to be as remote as the 
dimmest star, and as little related to our activi- 
ties. But what we call the slow lapse of ages is 
really only the blinking of an eye. Sometimes 
this sense of the close unity of all time and all 
human experience has come upon me so strongly 
that I have felt, for an intense moment, how just 
a little hurry on my part might get me there in 
time to hear ^schylus training a Chorus, or to 
see the wizard chisel still busy with the Parthenon 
frieze, or to hear Socrates telling his dreams to 
his judges. It is in some such mood that I ap- 



NOTE \x 

proach that body of precious saga-stuff which 
I have called the Western American Epos; and 
I see it, not as a thing in itself, but rather as one 
phase of the whole race life from the beginning; 
indeed, the final link in that long chain of heroic 
periods stretching from the region of the Euphrates 
eastward into India and westward to our own 
Pacific Coast. 

Like causes produce like effects; and as we 
follow the Aryan migration, we find that, over 
and over again, heroic periods occur ; and out of 
each period have grown epic and saga, celebrat- 
ing the deeds of the heroes. In India we find the 
Mahabharata and Ramayana; in Persia, the 
Shah Nameh ; among the Greeks, the Homeric 
poems; in Rome, the jEneid ; in Germany, the 
Niebelungenlied ; in France, the Chanson de Ro- 
land ; in the Scandinavian countries, the sagas 
and the Eddaic poems; in the British Isles, the 
Arthurian and Cuchulain cycles. The Race crosses 
the Atlantic, and the last lap of the long west- 
ward journey is begun. Still another typical heroic 
period develops; and where shall we find its 
epic ? Certainly not in Hiawatha, which is not 
concerned with our race, and but little with the 
real American Indian, for that matter. Certainly 
not in Evangeline, which is typical neither in 



X NOTE 

matter nor manner. Nor is it likely ever to be 
written on a theme concerned with the original 
Colonies, for the reason that in the Colonies 
society was never cut loose from its roots. The 
true American Epos was developed between the 
Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean in ap- 
proximately the first four decades of the 19th 
century. When the settlers began to cross the 
Missouri, the end of the epic period was in sight. 

As has been the case with all similar periods, 
a great body of legend, concerned with heroic 
deeds, grew up about those men who explored 
that vast wilderness in search of furs. These 
stories, which formerly circulated throughout the 
West as oral tradition, are now, in the main, 
known only to specialists in Western history; 
for they are to be found chiefly in contemporary 
journals and books of travel long since out of 
print and difficult to obtain. Any one who has 
taken the trouble to explore that spacious and 
comparatively little known field of American 
history will be likely to believe with me that the 
heroes of that time were the direct descendants, 
in the epic line, of all the heroes of the race that 
have been celebrated in song and saga. 

It would seem that we are now entering upon a 
period in which such a work as I propose might 



NOTE xi 

logically be written, if we are to accept the theory 
of George Edward Woodberry. He tells us that 
those literary works which embody represent- 
ative epochs appear upon what he terms "water- 
sheds of history"; that is to say, at those times 
when an old order is passing away, when men look 
for\\'ard hopefully or fearfully to new things, and 
backward a little wistfully to things that have 
been. That is the state of the modern world. 
We are experiencing the wane of individualism ; 
we are beginning to think in terms of the group ; 
and already reactionary voices are being raised 
in defence of the good old days when a man could 
do as it pleased him to do. And if we seek for 
that moment in our national life when individual- 
ism was most pronounced, we shall find it in the 
romantic period with which I am concerned ; 
for in that time society did not exist in the Trans- 
Missouri country, and there was no law but the 
whim of the daring and the strong. 

Obviously, in attempting to embody such a 
period in a literary work, it is necessary to con- 
centrate upon one representative portion of it. 
Fortunately, this can be done without sacrifice 
and without resorting to fictitious means. The 
story of the two expeditions that ascended the 
Missouri River under the leadership of Ashley 



xii NOTE 

and Henry of St. Louis in the years 1822 and 
1823, comprehends every phase of the life of the 
epoch and covers the entire Trans-Missouri 
region from the British boundaries to Santa Fe, 
and from St. Louis to the Spanish Settlements of 
California. Furthermore, of all the bands of 
trappers and traders that entered the wilderness 
during those years, none experienced so many 
extraordinary adventures as did the Ashley- 
Henry men. The story of their exploits and 
wanderings constitutes what I would call the 
Ashley-Henry Saga ; and it is upon this that 
I am basing my cycle. 

The first printed version of the present story 
is to be found in the files of a short-lived periodical 
known as The Western Souvenir, from which it 
was copied by the Western Monthly Review for 
July, 1829. The Missouri Intelligencer for 
September 4, 1829, and Howe's "Historical Col- 
lections of the Great West " contain practically 
the same version of the tale. A matter-of-fact 
reference to the episode is made on page 298 
of the Letter Book of the Superintendent of 
Indian Affairs, now among the manuscripts of 
the Kansas Historical Society at Topeka. 

I wish to express a sense of obligation to Mr. 
Doane Robinson, Secretary of the State His- 



NOTE xiii 

torical Society of South Dakota, for placing his 
wide knowledge of Western history at my 
disposal. 

John G. Neihardt. 

Bancroft, Nebraska, 
1918. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Ashley's Hundred i 

The Up-Stream Men 4 

To THE Musselshell 29 

The Net Is Cast 39 

The Quarrel 50 

The Shooting of the Cup 70 

The Third Rider 88 

Vengeance 108 



THE SONG OF THREE 
FRIENDS 

I 

ASHLEY'S HUNDRED 

Who now reads clear the roster of that band ? 
Alas, Time scribbles with a careless hand 
And often pinchbeck doings from that pen 
Bite deep, where deeds and dooms of mighty men 
Are blotted out beneath a sordid scrawl! 

One hundred strong they flocked to Ashley's call 
That spring of eighteen hundred twenty-two; 
For tales of wealth, out-legending Peru, 
Came wind-blown from Missouri's distant springs. 
And that old sireny of unknown things 
Bewitched them, and they could not linger more. 
They heard the song the sea winds sang the shore 
When earth was flat, and black ships dared the 

steep 
Where bloomed the purple perils of the deep 
In dragon-haunted gardens. They were young. 



2 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Albeit some might feel the winter flung 

Upon their heads, 'twas less like autumn's drift 

Than backward April's unregarded sift 

On stout oaks thrilling with the sap again. 

And some had scarce attained the height of men, 

Their lips unroughed, and gleaming in their eyes 

The light of immemorial surprise 

That life still kept the spaciousness of old 

And, like the hoarded tales their grandsires told, 

Might still run bravely. 

For a little span 
Their life-fires flared like torches in the van 
Of westward progress, ere the great wind 'woke 
To snufF them. Many vanished like a smoke 
The blue air drinks ; and e'en of those who burned 
Down to the socket, scarce a tithe returned 
To share at last the ways of quiet men, 
Or see the hearth-reek drifting once again 
Across the roofs of old St. Louis town. 

And now no more the mackinaws come down. 
Their gunwales low with costly packs and bales, 
A wind of wonder in their shabby sails, 
Their homing oars flung rhythmic to the tide; 
And nevermore the masted keelboats ride 
Missouri's stubborn waters on the lone 
Long zigzag journey to the Yellowstone. 



ASHLEY'S HUNDRED 3 

Their hulks have found the harbor ways that know 
The ships of all the Sagas, long ago — 
A moony haven where no loud gale stirs. 
The trappers and the singing voyageurs 
Are comrades now of Jason and his crew, 
Foregathered in that timeless rendezvous 
Where come at last all seekers of the Fleece. 

Not now of those who, dying, dropped in peace 
A brimming cup of years the song shall be : 
From Mississippi to the Western Sea, 
From Britain's country to the Rio Grande 
Their names are written deep across the land 
In pass and trail and river, like a rune. 

Pore long upon that roster by the moon 

Of things remembered dimly. Tangled, blear 

The writing runs ; yet presently appear 

Three names of men that, spoken, somehow seem 

Incantatory trumpets of a dream 

Obscurely blowing from the hinter-gloom. 

Of these and that inexorable doom 

That followed like a hound upon the scent. 

Here runs the tale. 



II 

THE UP-STREAM MEN 

When Major Henry went 
Up river at the head of Ashley's band. 
Already there were robins in the land. 
Home-keeping men were following the plows 
And through the smoke-thin greenery of boughs 
The scattering wild-fire of the fruit bloom ran. 

Behold them starting northward, if you can. 
Dawn flares across the Mississippi's tide; 
A tumult runs along the waterside 
Where, scenting an event, St. Louis throngs. 
Above the buzzling voices soar the songs 
Of waiting boatmen — lilting chansonettes 
Whereof the meaning laughs, the music frets, 
Nigh weeping that such gladness can not stay. 
In turn, the herded horses snort and neigh 
Like panic bugles. Up the gangplanks poured, 
Go streams of trappers, rushing goods aboard 
The snub-built keelboats, squat with seeming 

sloth — • 

Baled three-point blankets, blue and scarlet 

cloth, 

4 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 5 

Rum, powder, flour, guns, gauderies and lead. 
And all about, goodbyes are being said. 
Gauche girls with rainy April in their gaze 
Cling to their beardless heroes, count the days 
Between this parting and the wedding morn. 
Unwitting how unhuman Fate may scorn 
The youngling dream. For O how many a lad 
Would see the face of Danger, and go mad 
With her weird vixen beauty ; aye, forget 
This girl's face, yearning upward now and wet, 
Half woman's with the first vague guess at woe! 

And now commands are bellowed, boat horns 

blow 
Haughtily in the dawn ; the tumult swells. 
The tow-crews, shouldering the long cordelles 
Slack from the mastheads, lean upon the sag. 
The keelboats answer lazily and drag 
Their blunt prows slowly in the gilded tide. 
A steersman sings, and up the riverside 
The gay contagious ditty spreads and runs 
Above the shouts, the uproar of the guns, 
The nickering of horses. 

So, they say, 
Went forth a hundred singing men that day ; 
And girlish April went ahead of them. 
The music of her trailing garment's hem 



6 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Seemed scarce a league ahead. A little speed 
Might yet almost surprise her in the deed 
Of sorcery ; for, ever as they strove, 
A gray-green smudge in every poplar grove 
Proclaimed the recent kindling. Aye, it seemed 
That bird and bush and tree had only dreamed 
Of song and leaf and blossom, till they heard 
The young men's feet; when tree and bush and 

bird Y 

Unleashed the whole conspiracy of awe! 
Pale green was every slough about the Kaw; 
About the Platte, pale green was every slough ; 
And still the pale green lingered at the Sioux, 
So close they trailed the marching of the South. 
But when they reached the Niobrara's mouth 
The witchery of spring had taken flight 
And, like a girl grown woman over night, 
Young summer glowed. 

And now the river rose, 
Gigantic from a feast of northern snows, 
And mightily the snub prows felt the tide ; 
But with the loud, sail-filling South allied, 
The tow-crews battled gaily day by day; 
And seldom lulled the struggle on the way 
But some light jest availed to fling along 
The panting lines the laughter of the strong, 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 7 

For joy sleeps lightly in the hero's mood. 

And when the sky-wide prairie solitude 

Was darkened round them, and the camp was set 

Secure for well-earned sleep that came not yet. 

What stories shaped for marvel or for mirth! — 

Tales fit to strain the supper-tightened girth, 

Looped yarns, wherein the veteran spinners vied 

To color with a lie more glorified 

Some thread that had veracity enough. 

Spun straightway out of life's own precious 

stuff 
That each had scutched and heckled in the raw. 
Then thinner grew each subsequent guffaw 
While drowsily the story went the rounds 
And o'er the velvet dark the summer sounds 
Prevailed in weird crescendo more and more, 
Until the story-teller with a snore 
Gave over to a dream a tale half told. 

And now the horse-guards, while the night grows 

old. 
With intermittent singing buffet sleep 
That surges subtly down the starry deep 
On waves of odor from the manless miles 
Of summer-haunted prairie. Now, at whiles, 
The kiote's mordant clamor cleaves the drowse. 
The horses stamp and blow; about the prows 



8 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Dark waters chug and gurgle ; as with looms 
Bugs weave a drone ; a beaver's diving booms, 
Whereat bluffs grumble in their sable cowls. 
The devil laughter of the prairie owls 
Mocks mirth anon, like unrepentant sin. 
Perceptibly at last slow hours wear thin 
The east, until the prairie stares with morn, 
And horses nicker to the boatman's horn 
That blares the music of a day begun. 

So through the days of thunder and of sun 
They pressed to northward. Now the river 

shrank. 
The grass turned yellow and the men were lank 
And gnarled with labor. Smooth-lipped lads 

matured 
'Twixt moon and moon with all that they 

endured. 
Their faces leathered by the wind and glare, 
Their eyes grown ageless with the calm far 

stare 
Of men who know the prairies or the seas. 
And when they reached the village of the 

Rees, 
One scarce might say, This man is young, this 

old. 
Save for the beard. 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 9 

Here loitered days of gold 
And days of leisure, welcome to the crews ; 
For recently had come the wondrous news 
Of beaver-haunts be^^ond the Great Divide — 
So rich a tale 'twould seem the tellers lied, 
Had they not much fine peltry to attest. 
So now the far off River of the West 
Became the goal of venture for the band ; 
And since the farther trail lay overland 
From where the Great Falls thundered to no 

ear, 
They paused awhile to buy more ponies here 
With powder, liquor, gauds and wily words. 
A horse-fond people, opulent in herds. 
The Rees were; and the trade was very good. 

Now camped along the river-fringing wood. 
Three sullen, thunder-brewing, rainless days. 
Those weathered men made merry in their 

ways 
With tipple, euchre, story, jest and song. 
The marksmen matched their cleverness; the 

strong 
Wrestled the strong; and brawling pugilists 
Displayed the boasted power of their fists 
In stubborn yet half amicable fights. 
And whisky went hell-roaring through the nights 



lo THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Among the lodges of the fuddled Rees. 
Thus merrily the trappers took their ease, 
Rejoicing in the thread that Clotho spun ; 
For it was good to feel the bright thread run, 
However eager for the snipping shears. 

O joy long stifled in the ruck of years! 
How many came to strange and bitter ends! 
And who was merrier than those three friends 
Whom here a song remembers for their woe ? 

Will Carpenter, Mike Fink and Frank Talbeau 

Were they — each gotten of a doughty breed ; 

For in the blood of them the ancient seed 

Of Saxon, Celt and Norman grew again. 

The Mississippi reared no finer men. 

And rarely the Ohio knew their peers 

For pluck and prowess — even in those years 

When stern life yielded suck but to the strong. 

Nor in the hundred Henry took along 

Was found their match — and each man knew it 

well. 
For instance, when it suited Mike to tell 
A tale that called for laughter, as he thought. 
The hearer laughed right heartily, or fought 
And took a drubbing. Then, if more complained. 
Those three lacked not for logic that explained 



THE UP-STREAM MEN ii 

The situation in no doubtful way. 

"Me jokes are always funny" Mike would say; 

And most men freely granted that they were. 

A lanky, rangy man was Carpenter, 

Quite six feet two from naked heel to crown ; 

And, though crow-lean, he brought the steelyard 

down 
With twice a hundred notched upon the bar. 
Nor was he stooped, as tall men often are ; 
A cedar of a man, he towered straight. 
One might have judged him lumbering of gait. 
When he was still ; but when he walked or ran, 
He stepped it lightly like a little man — 
And such a one is very good to see. 
Not his the tongue for quip or repartee ; 
His wit seemed slow ; and something of the child 
Came o'er his rough-hewn features, when he 

smiled. 
To mock the porching brow and eagle nose. 
'Twas when he fought the true import of those 
Grew clear, though even then his mien deceived ; 
For less in wrath, he seemed, than mildly 

grieved — 
Which made his blows no whit less true or hard. 
His hair was flax fresh gleaming from the card ; 
His eyes, the flax in bloom. 



12 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A match in might, 
Fink lacked five inches of his comrade's height, 
And of his weight scarce twenty pounds, they 

say. 
His hair was black, his small eyes greenish gray 
And restless as though feeling out of place 
In such a jocund plenilunar face 
That seemed made just for laughter. Then one 

saw 
The pert pugnacious nose, the forward jaw, 
The breadth of stubborn cheekbones, and one 

knew 
That jest and fight to him were scarcely two. 
But rather shifting phases of the joy 
He felt in living. Careless as a boy. 
Free handed with a gift or with a blow. 
And giving either unto friend or foe 
With frank good will, no man disliked him long. 
They say his voice could glorify a song. 
However loutish might the burden be ; 
And all the way from Pittsburg to the sea 
The Rabelaisian stories of the rogue 
Ran wedded to the richness of his brogue. 
And wheresoever boatmen came to drink. 
There someone broached some escapade of Fink 
That well might fill the goat-hoofed with delight ; 
For Mike, the pantagruelizing wight. 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 13 

Was happy in the health of bone and brawn 

And had the code and conscience of the faun 

To guide him bhthely down the easy way, 

A questionable hero, one might say : 

And so indeed, by any civil law. 

Moreover, at first glimpse of him one saw 

A bull-necked fellow, seeming over stout ; 

Tremendous at a heavy lift, no doubt, 

But wanting action. By the very span 

Of chest and shoulders, one misjudged the man 

When he was clothed. But when he stripped to 

swim, 
Men flocked about to have a look at him. 
Moved vaguely by that body's wonder-scheme 
Wherein the shape of God's Adamic dream 
Was victor over stubborn dust again ! 

O very lovely is a maiden, when 

The old creative thrill is set astir 

Along her blood, and all the flesh of her 

Is shapen as to music! Fair indeed 

A tall horse, lean of flank, clean-limbed for 

speed, 
Deep-chested for endurance! Very fair 
A soaring tree, aloof in violet air 
Upon a hill! And 'tis a glorious thing 
To see a bankfull river in the spring 



14 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Fight homeward ! Children wonderful to see — 

The Girl, the Horse, the River and the Tree — 

As any suckled at the breast of sod ; 

Dissolving symbols leading back to God 

Through vista after vista of the Plan ! 

But surely none is fairer than a man 

In whom the lines of might and grace are one. 

Bronzed with exposure to the wind and sun, 
Behold the splendid creature that was Fink! 
You see him strolling to the river's brink. 
All ease, and yet tremendously alive. 
He pauses, poised on tiptoe for the dive. 
And momently it seems the mother mud. 
Quick with a mystic seed whose sap is blood. 
Mysteriously rears a human flower. 
Clean as a windless flame the lines of power 
Run rhythmic up the stout limbs, muscle- 
laced. 
Athwart the ropy gauntness of the waist. 
The huge round girth of chest, whereover spread 
Enormous shoulders. Now above his head 
He lifts his arms where big thews merge and 

flow 
As in some dream of Michelangelo ; 
And up along the dimpling back there run, 
Like lazy serpents stirring in the sun. 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 15 

Slow waves that break and pile upon the slope 
Of that great neck in swelling rolls, a-grope 
Beneath the velvet softness of the skin. 
Now suddenly the lean waist grows more thin, 
The deep chest on a sudden grows more deep ; 
And with the swiftness of a tiger's leap. 
The easy grace of hawks in swooping flight. 
That terrible economy of might j 

And beauty plunges outward from the brink. 

Thus God had made experiment with Fink, 
As proving how 'twere best that men might 
grow. 

One turned from Mike to look upon Talbeau — 

A little man, scarce five feet six and slim — 

And wondered what his comrades saw in him 

To justify their being thus allied. 

Was it a sort of planetary pride 

In lunar adoration? Hark to Mike : 

"Shure I declare I niver saw his like — 

A skinny whiffet of a man ! And yit — 

Well, do ye moind the plisint way we mit 

And how he interjooced hisself that day? 

'Twas up at Pittsburg, liquor flowin' fray 

And ivrybody happy as a fool. 

I cracked me joke and thin, as is me rule, 



i6 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Looked round to view the havoc of me wit ; 

And ivrywan was doubled up wid it, 

Save only wan, and him a scrubby mite. 

Says I, and shure me language was polite, 

*And did ye hear me little joke?' says I. 

'I did' says he. 'And can't ye laugh, me 

b'y?' 
*I can't' says he, the sassy little chap. 
Nor did I git me hand back from the slap 
I give him till he landed on me glim, 
And I was countin' siventeen of him 
And ivry dancin' wan of him was air! 
Faith, whin I hit him he was niver there ; 
And shure it seemed that ivry wind that blew 
Was peltin' knuckles in me face. Hurroo! 
That toime, fer wance, I got me fill of fun ! 
God bless the little whiffet! It begun 
Along about the shank of afthernoon; 
And whin I washed me face, I saw the moon 
A-shakin' wid its laughther in the shtrame. 
And whin, betoimes, he wakened from his 

drame, 
I says to him, 'Ye needn't laugh, me b'y : 
A cliver little man ye are,' says I. 
And Och, the face of me ! I'm tellin' fac's — 
Ye'd wonder did he do it wid an ax! 
'Twas foine! 'Twas art!" 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 17 

Thus, eloquent with pride, 
Mike Fink, an expert witness, testified • 
To Talbeau's fistic prowess. 

Now they say 
There lived no better boatmen in their day 
Than those three comrades; and the larger 

twain 
In that wide land three mighty rivers drain 
Found not their peers for skill in marksmanship. 
Writes one, who made the long Ohio trip 
With those boon cronies in their palmy days. 
How once Mike Fink beheld a sow at graze 
Upon the bank amid her squealing brood ; 
And how Mike, being in a merry mood, 
Shot off each wiggling piglet's corkscrew tail 
At twenty yards, while under easy sail 
The boat moved on. And Carpenter could bore 
A squirrel's eye clean at thirty steps and more — 
So many say. But 'twas their dual test 
Of mutual love and skill they liked the best 
Of all their shooting tricks — when one stood up 
At sixty paces with a whisky cup 
Set brimming for a target on his head. 
And felt the gusty passing of the lead. 
Hot from the other's rifle, lift his hair. 
And ever was the tin cup smitten fair 
c 



r8 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

By each, to prove the faith of each anew : 

For 'twas a rite of love between the two, 

And not a mere capricious feat of skill. 

"Och, shure, and can ye shoot the whisky, Bill?" 

So Mike would end a wrangle. "Damn it. 

Fink! 
Let's bore a pair of cups and have a drink !" 
So Carpenter would stop a row grown stale. 
And neither feared that either love might fail 
Or either skill might falter. 

Thus appear 
The doughty three who held each other dear 
For qualities they best could comprehend. 

Now came the days of leisure to an end — 

The days so gaily squandered, that would 

seem 
To men at length made laughterless, a dream 
Unthinkably remote ; for Ilion held 
Beneath her sixfold cerement of Eld 
Seems not so hoar as bygone joy we prize 
In evil days. Now vaguely pale the skies. 
The glimmer neither starlight's nor the morn's. 
A rude ironic merriment of horns 
Startles the men yet heavy with carouse, 
And sets a Ree dog mourning in the drowse. 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 19 

Snout sk3rward from a lodge top. Sleepy birds 
Chirp in the brush. A drone of sullen words 
Awakes and runs increasing through the camp. 
Thin smoke plumes, rising in the valley damp, 
Flatten among the leathern tents and make 
The whole encampment like a ghostly lake 
Where bobbing heads of swimmers come and go, 
As with the whimsy of an undertow 
That sucks and spews them. Raising dust and 

din. 
The horse-guards drive their shaggy rabble in 
From nightlong grazing. Voyageurs, with packs 
Of folded tents and camp gear on their backs, 
Slouch boatward through the reek. But when 

prevails 
The smell of frying pans and coffee pails. 
They cease to sulk and, greatly heartened, 

sing 
Till ponies swell the chorus, nickering, 
And race-old comrades jubilate as one. 

Out of a roseless dawn the heat-pale sun 
Beheld them toiling northward once again — 
A hundred horses and a hundred men 
Hushed in a windless swelter. Day on day 
The same white dawn o'ertook them on their 
way; 



20 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

And daylong in the white glare sang no bird. 
But only shrill grasshoppers clicked and whirred, 
As though the heat were vocal. All the while 
The dwindling current lengthened, mile on 

mile, 
Meandrous in a labyrinth of sand. 

Now e'er they left the Ree town by the Grand 
The revellers had seen the spent moon roam 
The morning, like a tipsy hag bound home. 
A bubble-laden boat, they saw it sail 
The sunset river of a fairy tale 
When they were camped beside the Cannon- 
ball. 
A spectral sun, it held the dusk in thrall 
Nightlong about the Heart. The stars alone 
Upon the cluttered Mandan lodges shone 
The night they slept below the Knife. And 

when 
Their course, long westward, shifted once again 
To lead them north, the August moon was new. 

The rainless Southwest wakened now and blew 
A wilting, worrying, breath-sucking gale 
That roared one moment in the bellied sail, 
Next moment slackened to a lazy croon. 
Now came the first misfortune. All forenoon 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 21 

With line and pole the sweating boatmen strove 
Along the east bank, while the horseguards 

drove 
The drooping herd a little to the fore. 
And then the current took the other shore. 
Straight on, a maze of bar and shallow lay, 
The main stream running half a mile away 
To westward of a long low willow isle. 
An hour they fought that stubborn half a mile 
Of tumbled water. Down the running planks 
The polesmen toiled in endless slanting ranks. 
Now swimming, now a-flounder in the ooze 
Of some blind bar, the naked cordelle crews 
Sought any kind of footing for a pull ; 
While gust-bedevilled sails, now booming full, 
Now flapping slack, gave questionable aid. 

The west bank gained, along a ragged shade 

Of straggling cottonwoods the boatmen sprawled 

And panted. Out across the heat-enthralled. 

Wind-fretted waste of shoal and bar they saw 

The string of ponies ravelled up a draw 

That mounted steeply eastward from the vale 

Where, like a rampart flung across the trail, 

A bluff rose sheer. Heads low, yet loath to 

graze, 
They waxed and withered in the oily haze. 



22 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Now ponies, now a crawling flock of sheep. 
Behind them three slack horseguards, half 

asleep, 
Swayed limply, leaning on their saddle-bows. 

The boat crews, lolling in a semi-doze, 
Still watch the herd ; nor do the gazers dream 
What drama nears a climax over stream, 
What others yonder may be watching too. 
Now looming large upon the lucent blue. 
The foremost ponies top the rim, and stare 
High-headed down the vacancies of air 
Beneath them ; while the herders dawdle still 
And gather wool scarce halfway up the hill — 
A slumbrous sight beheld by heavy eyes. 

But hark ! What murmuring of far-flung cries 
From yonder pocket in the folded rise 
That flanks the draw ? The herders also hear 
And with a start glance upward to the rear. 
Their spurred mounts plunge ! What do they 

see but dust 
Whipped skyward yonder in a freakish gust ? 
What panic overtakes them ? Look again ! 
The rolling dust cloud vomits mounted men, 
A ruck of tossing heads and gaudy gears 
Beneath a bristling thicket of lean spears 
Slant in a gust of onset ! 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 23 

Over stream 
The boatmen stare dumfounded. Like a dream 
In some vague region out of space and time 
Evolves the swiftly moving pantomime 
Before those loungers with ungirded loins ; 
Till one among them shouts " AssiniboinesI" 
And swelling to a roar, the wild word runs 
Above a pellmell scramble for the guns, 
Perceived as futile soon. Yet here and there 
A few young hotheads fusillade the air. 
And rage the more to know the deed absurd. 
Some only grind their teeth without a word ; 
Some stand aghast, some grinningly inane. 
While some, like watch-dogs rabid at the chain, 
Growl curses, pacing at the river's rim. 

So might unhappy spirits haunt the dim 
Far shore of Styx, beholding outrage done 
To loved ones in the region of the sun — 
Rage goaded by its own futility ! 

For one vast moment strayed from time, they see 
The war band flung obliquely down the slope, 
The flying herdsmen, seemingly a-grope 
In sudden darkness for their saddle guns. 
A murmuring shock ! And now the whole scene 
runs 



24 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Into a dusty blur of horse and man ; 

And now the herd's rear surges on the van 

That takes the cue of panic fear and flies 

Stampeding to the margin of the skies, 

Till all have vanished in the deeps of air. 

Now outlined sharply on the sky-rim there 

The victors pause and taunt their helpless 

foes 
With buttocks patted and with thumbs at nose 
And jeers scarce hearkened for the wind's guflFaw. 
They also vanish. In the sunwashed draw 
Remains no sign of what has come to pass, 
Save three dark splotches on the yellow grass, 
Where now the drowsy horseguards have their 

will. 

At sundown on the summit of the hill 

The huddled boatmen saw the burial squad 

Tuck close their comrades' coverlet of sod — 

Weird silhouettes on melancholy gray. 

And very few found anything to say 

That night ; though some spoke gently of the 

dead, 
Remembering what that one did or said 
At such and such a time. And some, more 

stirred 
With lust of vengeance for the stolen herd, 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 25 

Swore vaguely now and then beneath their breath. 
Some, brooding on the imminence of death, 
Grew wistful of their unreturning years ; 
And some who found their praying in arrears 
Made shift to liquidate the debt that night. 

But when once more the cheerful morning light 
Came on them toiling, also came the mood 
Of young adventure, and the solitude 
Sang with them. For 'tis glorious to spend 
One's golden days large-handed to the end — 
The good broadpieces that can buy so much ! 
And what may hoarders purchase but a crutch 
Wherewith to hobble graveward ? 

On they pressed 
To where once more the river led them west ; 
And every day the hot wind, puff on pufF, 
Assailed them ; every night they heard it sough 
In thickets prematurely turning sere. 

Then came the sudden breaking of the year. 

Abruptly in a waning afternoon 

The hot wind ceased, as fallen in a swoon 

With its own heat. For hours the swinking 

crews 
Had bandied scarcely credible good news 



26 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Of clouds across the dim northwestward plain ; 
And they who offered wagers on the rain 
Found ready takers, though the gloomy rack, 
With intermittent rumbling at its back, 
Had mounted slowly. Now it towered high, 
A blue-black wall of night across the sky 
Shot through with glacial green. 

A mystic change ! 
The sun was hooded and the world went 

strange — 
A picture world ! The hollow hush that fell 
Made loud the creaking of the taut cordelle, 
The bent spar's groan, the plunk of steering 

poles. 
A bodeful calm lay glassy on the shoals ; 
The current had the look of flowing oil. 
They saw the cloud's lip billow now and boil — 
Black breakers gnawing at a coast of light ; 
They saw the stealthy wraith-arms of the night 
Grope for the day to strangle it ; they saw 
The up-stream reaches vanish in a flaw 
Of driving sand : and scarcely were the craft 
Made fast to clumps of willow fore and aft, 
When with a roar the blinding fury rolled 
Upon them ; and the breath of it was cold. 
There fell no rain. 



THE UP-STREAM MEN 27 

That night was calm and clear : 
Just such a night as when the waning year 
Has set aflare the old Missouri wood ; 
When Greenings are beginning to be good ; 
And when, so hollow is the frosty hush, 
One hears the ripe persimmons falling — plush ! — 
Upon the littered leaves. The kindly time ! 
With cider in the vigor of its prime, 
Just strong enough to edge the dullest wit 
Should neighbor folk drop in awhile to sit 
And gossip. O the dear flame-painted gloam. 
The backlog's sputter on the hearth at home — 
How far away that night ! Thus many a 

lad, 
Grown strangely old, remembered and was sad. 
Wolves mourned among the bluffs. Like hanks 

of wool 
Fog flecked the river. And the moon was full. 

A week sufficed to end the trail. They came 
To where the lesser river gives its name 
And meed of waters to the greater stream. 
Here, lacking horses, they must nurse the 

dream 
Of beaver haunts beyond the Great Divide, 
Build quarters for the winter trade, and bide 
The coming up of Ashley and his band. 



28 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

So up and down the wooded tongue of land 

That thins to where the rivers wed, awoke 

The sound of many axes, stroke on stroke ; 

And lustily the hewers sang at whiles — 

The better to forget the homeward miles 

In this, the homing time. And when the geese 

With cacophonic councils broke the peace 

Of frosty nights before they took to wing ; 

When cranes went over daily, southering, 

And blackbirds chattered in the painted wood, 

A mile above the river junction stood 

The fort, adjoining the Missouri's tide. 

Foursquare and thirty paces on a side, 

A wall of sharpened pickets bristled round 

A group of sod-roofed cabins. Bastions frowned 

From two opposing corners, set to brave 

A foe on either flank ; and stout gates gave 

Upon the stream, where now already came 

The Indian craft, lured thither by the fame 

Of traders building by the mating floods. 



Ill 

TO THE MUSSELSHELL 

Now came at dawn a party of the Bloods, 

Who told of having paddled seven nights 

To parley for their people with the Whites, 

The long way lying 'twixt a foe and foe ; 

For ever on their right hand lurked the Crow, 

And on their left hand, the Assiniboine. 

The crane-winged news, that where the waters 

join 
The Long Knives built a village, made them sad ; 
Because the pastures thereabouts were bad, 
Sustaining few and very scrawny herds. 
So they had hastened hither, bringing words 
Of kindness from their mighty men, to tell 
What welcome waited on the Musselshell 
Where stood the winter lodges of their band. 

They rhapsodized the fatness of that land : 
Lush valleys where all summer bison ran 
To grass grown higher than a mounted man ! 
Aye, winter long on many a favored slope 
The bison grazed with goat and antelope, 
29 



30 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Nor were they ever leaner in the spring ! 

One heard the diving beaver's thundering 

In all the streams at night ; and one might hear 

Uncounted bull elks whistle, when the year 

Was painted for its death. Their squaws were 

good, 
Strong bearers of the water and the wood, 
With quiet tongues and never weary hands ; 
Tall as the fighting men of other lands, 
And good to look upon. These things were so ! 
Why else then should Assiniboine and Crow 
Assail the Bloods ? 

Now flaring up, they spoke 
Of battles and their haters blown as smoke 
Before the blizzard of their people's ire. 
Devoured as grass before a prairie fire 
That licks the heavens when the Northwind 

runs! 
But, none the less, their warriors needed guns 
And powder. Wherefor, let the Great White 

Chief 
Return with them, ere yet the painted leaf 
Had fallen. If so be he might not leave 
This land of peoples skillful to deceive. 
Who, needing much, had scarce a hide to sell — 
Then send a party to the Musselshell 



TO THE MUSSELSHELL 



31 



To trade and trap until the grass was young 
And calves were yellow. With no forked tongue 
The Bloods had spoken. Had the White Chief 

ears ? 

So Major Henry called for volunteers ; 
And Fink was ready on the word to go 
"And chance the bloody naygurs"; then Tal- 

beau, 
Then Carpenter; and after these were nine. 
In whom young blood was like a beading wine, 
Who lusted for the venture. 

Late that night 
The Bloods set out for home. With day's first 

light 
The dozen trappers followed, paddling west 
In six canoes. And whatso suited best 
The whimsies of the savage or his needs, 
The slim craft carried — scarlet cloth and beads, 
Some antiquated muskets, powder, ball, 
Traps, knives, and little casks of alcohol 
To lubricate the rusty wheels of trade ! 

So, singing as they went, the blithe brigade 
Departed, with their galloping canoes 
Heeding the tune. They had no time to lose; 



32 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

For long and stubborn was the upstream way, 
And when they launched their boats at break of 

day 
They heard a thin ice tinkle at the prows. 

A bodeful silence and a golden drowse 

Possessed the land. The Four Winds held their 

breath 
Before a vast serenity of death, 
Wherein it seemed the reminiscent Year — 
A yearning ghost now — wrought about its bier 
Some pale hallucination of its May. 
Bleak stretched the prairie to the walls of day, 
So dry, that where a loping kiote broke 
Its loneliness, it smouldered into smoke : 
And when a herd of bison rumbled past, 
'Twas like a great fire booming in a blast, 
The rolling smudge whereof concealed the flame. 

Proceeding in the truce of winds, they came 

In five days to the vale the Poplar drains. 

A trailing flight of southbound whooping cranes, 

Across the fading West, was like a scrawl 

Of cabalistic warning on a wall. 

And counselled haste. In seven days they 

reached 
The point where Wolf Creek empties in, and 

beached 



TO THE MUSSELSHELL 33 

Their keels along its dusty bed. In nine, 

Elk Prairie and the Little Porcupine, 

Now waterless, had fallen to the rear. 

The tenth sun failed them on the lone frontier 

Where flows the turbid Milk by countless bends 

And where Assiniboian country ends 

And Blackfoot Land begins. The hollow gloom 

All night resounded with the beaver's boom ; 

A wolf pack yammered from a distant hill ; 

Anon a rutting elk cried, like a shrill 

Arpeggio blown upon a flageolet. 

A half day more their lifting prows were set 

To westward ; then the flowing trail led south 

Two days by many a bend to Hell Creek's mouth 

Amid the Badlands. Gazing from a height. 

The lookout saw the marching of the Night 

Across a vast black waste of peaks and deeps 

That could have been infernal cinder-heaps, 

The relics of an ancient hell gone cold. 

That night they saw a wild aurora rolled 
Above the lifeless wilderness. It formed 
Northeastwardly in upright waves that stormed 
To westward, sequent combers of the bow 
That gulfed Polaris in their undertow 
And hurtled high upon the Ursine Isles 
A surf of ghostly fire. Again, at whiles, 



34 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A shimmering silken veil, it puffed and swirled 
As 'twere the painted curtain of the world 
That fluttered in a rising gale of doom. 
And when it vanished in the starry gloom 
One said " 'Twill blow to-morrow." 

So it did. 
Ere noon they raised the Half Way Pyramid 
Southwestward ; saw its wraith-like summit 

lift 
And seem to float northwest against a drift 
Of wind-whipped dust. The lunar hills about — 
Where late a bird's note startled like a shout 
The hush that seemed the body of old Time — 
Now bellowed where the hoofs of Yotunheim 
Foreran the grizzled legions of the Snow. 
'Twas peep of day when it began to blow, 
A zephyr growing stronger with the light, 
And now by fits it churned the river white 
And whipped the voyageurs with freezing spray. 
The windward reaches took their breath away. 
Ghost-white and numb with cold, from bend to 

bend, 
Where transiently the wind became a friend 
To drive them south, they battled ; till at 

last 
Around a jutting bluff they met a blast 



A 



TO THE MUSSELSHELL 35 

That choked as with a hand upon their throats 
The song they sang for courage ; hurled their 

boats 
Against the farther shore and held them pinned. 

A sting of spitting snow was in the wind. 
Southwest by west across the waste, where fell 
A murky twilight, lay the Musselshell — 
Two days of travel with the crow for guide. 
Here must they find them shelter, and abide 
The passing of the blizzard as they could. 
The banks bore neither plum nor cottonwood 
And all the hills were naked as a hand. 
But where, debouching from the broken land, 
A river in the spring was wont to flow, 
A northward moving herd of buffalo 
Had crossed the river, evidently bound 
From failing pastures to the grazing ground 
Along the Milk : and where the herd had 

passed 
Was scattered bois de vache enough to last 
Until the storm abated. So they packed 
Great blanketfuls of sun-dried chips, and stacked 
The precious fuel where the wind was stilled — 
A pocket hemmed by lofty bluffs and filled 
With mingled dusk and thunder ; bore therein 
Canoes and cargo, pitched their tents of skin 



36 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

About a central heap of glowing chips, 

And dined on brittle bull-meat dried in strips, 

With rum to wash it down. 

It snowed all night. 
The earth and heavens, in the morning light, 
Were one white fury ; and the stream ran slush. 
Two days and nights the gale boomed ; then a 

hush 
Fell with the sun ; and when the next dawn 

came — 
A pale flare flanked by mockeries of flame — 
The river lay as solid as the land. 

Now caching half their goods, the little band 
Resumed the journey, toiling under packs ; 
And twice they felt the morning at their backs, 
A laggard traveller ; and twice they saw 
The sunset dwindle to a starry awe 
Beyond the frozen vast, while still they pressed 
The journey — bearded faces yearning west. 
White as the waste they trod. Then one day 

more, 
Southwestward, brought them to the jutting shore 
That faced the goal. 

A strip of poplars stretched 
Along a winding stream, their bare boughs etched 



TO THE MUSSELSHELL 37 

Black line by line upon a flat of snow 

Blue tinted in the failing afterglow. 

Humped ponies 'mid the drifts and clumps of sage 

Went nosing after grudging pasturage 

Where'er it chanced the blizzard's whimsic flaws 

Had swept the slough grass bare. A flock of 

squaws 
Chopped wood and chattered in the underbrush, 
Their ax strokes thudding dully in the hush, 
Their nasal voices rising shrill and clear : 
And, circled 'neath a bluff that towered sheer 
Beside the stream, snug lodges wrought of hide, 
Smoke-plumed and glowing with the fires inside, 
Made glad the gazers. Even as they stood, 
Content to stare a moment, from the wood 
The clamor deepened, and a running shout 
Among the lodges brought the dwellers out, 
Braves, squaws, papooses ; and the wolf dogs 

bayed ; 
And up the flat the startled ponies neighed, 
Pricking their ears to question what befell. 

So came Fink's party to the Musselshell, 
Gaunt, bearded, yet — how gloriously young 
And then, what feasts of bison fleece and tongue, 
Of browned boudin and steaming humprib stew ! 
What roaring nights of wassailing they knew — 



38 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Gargantuan regales — when through the town 
The fiery liquor ravined, melting down 
The tribal hoard of beaver ! How they made 
Their merest gewgaws mighty in the trade ! 
Aye, merry men they were ! Nor could they 

know 
How even then there came that wraith of woe 
Amongst them ; some swift-fingered Fate that 

span 
The stuff of sorrow, wove 'twixt man and man 
The tangling mesh, that friend might ruin friend 
And each go stumbling to a bitter end — 
A threefold doom that now the Song recalls. 



IV 

THE NET IS CAST 

There was a woman. 

What enchantment falls 
Upon that far off revel ! How the din 
Of jangling voices, chaffering to win 
The lesser values, hushes at the words, 
As dies the dissonance of brawling birds 
Upon a calm before the storm is hurled ! 
Lo, down the age-long reaches of the world 
What rose-breatht wind of ghostly music creeps ! 

And was she fair — this woman ? Legend keeps 
No answer; yet we know that she was young. 
If truly comes the tale by many a tongue 
That one of Red Hair's party fathered her. 
What need to know her features as they were ? 
Was she not lovely as her lover's thought. 
And beautiful as that wild love she wrought 
Was fatal ? Vessel of the world's desire. 
Did she not glow with that mysterious fire 
That lights the hearth or burns the rooftree down ? 
What face was hers who made the timeless town 
39 



40 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A baleful torch forever ? Hers who wailed 
Upon the altar when the four winds failed 
At Aulis ? What the image that looked up 
On Iseult from the contemplated cup 
Of everlasting thirst ? What wondrous face 
Above the countless cradles of the race 
Makes sudden heaven for the blinking eyes ? 
One face in truth ! And once in Paradise 
Each man shall stray unwittingly, and see — 
In some unearthly valley where the Tree 
With golden fruitage perilously fraught 
Still stands — that image of God's afterthought. 
Then shall the world turn wonderful and strange ! 

Who knows how came that miracle of change 

To Fink at last ? For he was not of such 

As tend to prize one woman overmuch ; 

And legend has it that, from Pittsburg down 

To Baton Rouge, in many a river town 

Some blowsy Ariadne pined for Mike. 

"It is me rule to love 'em all alike." 

He often said, with slow, omniscient wink, 

When just the proper quantity of drink 

Had made him philosophic; "Glass or gourd, 

Shure, now, they're all wan liquor whin they're 

poured ! 
Aye, rum is rum, me b'y !" 



THE NET IS CAST 41 

Alas, the tongue ! 
How glibly are its easy guesses flung 
Against the knowing reticence of years. 
To echo laughter in the time of tears, 
Raw gusts of mocking merriment that stings ! 
Some logic in the seeming ruck of things 
Inscrutably confutes us ! 

Now had come 
The time when rum no longer should be rum, 
But witchwine sweet with peril. It befell 
In this wise, insofar as tongue may tell 
And tongues repeat the little eyes may guess 
Of what may happen in that wilderness, 
The human heart. There dwelt a mighty man 
Among the Bloods, a leader of his clan, 
Around whose life were centered many lives, 
For many sons had he of many wives ; 
And also he was rich in pony herds. 
Wherefore, they say, men searched his lightest 

words 
For hidden things, since anyone might see 
That none had stronger medicine than he 
To shape aright the stubborn stuff of life. 
Among the women that he had to wife 
Was she who knew the white man when the band 
Of Red Hair made such marvel in the land. 



42 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

She being younger then and Httle wise. 
But in that she was pleasing to the eyes 
And kept her fingers busy for her child 
And bore a silent tongue, the great man smiled 
Upon the woman, called her to his fire 
And gave the Long Knife's girl a foster sire, 
So that her maidenhood was never lean, 
But like a pasture that is ever green 
Because it feels a mountain's sunny flank. 

Now in the season when the pale sun shrank 
Far southward, like another kind of moon. 
And dawns were laggard and the dark came soon. 
It pleased the great man's whim to give a feast. 
'Twas five days after Carpenter went east 
With eight stout ponies and a band of three 
To lift the cache ; a fact that well might be 
Sly father to the great man's festive mood — 
A wistfully prospective gratitude, 
Anticipating charity ! 

It chanced 
That while the women sang and young men 

danced 
About the drummers, and the pipe went round, 
And ever 'twixt the songs arose the sound 
Of fat dog stewing. Fink, with mournful eyes 
And pious mien, lamented the demise 



THE NET IS CAST 43 

Of "pore owld Fido," till his comrades choked 

With stifled laughter; soberly Invoked 

The plopping stew ("Down, Rover I Down, me 

lad!"); 
Discussed the many wives the old man had 
In language more expressive than polite. 
So, last of all his merry nights, that night 
Fink clowned It, little dreaming he was doomed 
To wear that mask of sorrow he assumed 
In comic mood, thenceforward to the last. 
For even as he joked, the net was cast 
About him, and the mystic change had come, 
And he had looked on rum that was not rum — 
The Long Knife's daughter ! 

Stooped beneath a pack 
Of bundled twigs, she pushed the lodge-flap 

back 
And entered lightly ; placed her load of wood 
Beside the fire; then straightened up and stood 
One moment there, a shapely girl and tall. 
There wasn't any drama : that was all. 
But when she left, the wit had died in Fink. 
He seemed a man who takes the one more drink 
That spoils the fun, relaxes jaw and jowl 
And makes the jester, like a sunstruck owl, 
Stare solemnly at nothing. 



44 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

All next day 
He moped about with scarce a word to say, 
And no one dared investigate his whim. 
But when the twilight came, there fell on him 
A sentimental, reminiscent mood. 
As though upon some frozen solitude 
Within him, breathed a softening chinook, 
Far strayed across the alplike years that look 
On what one used to be and what one is. 
And when he raised that mellow voice of his 
In songs of lovers wedded to regret, 
'Tis said that, unashamed, men's eyes grew 

wet, 
So poignantly old memories were stirred. 
And much his comrades marvelled as they 

heard 
That ribald jester singing thus of love. 
Nor could they solve the mystery thereof, 
Until at dawn they saw him rise and take 
A rifle of the latest Hawkin make. 
Ball, powder, and a bolt of scarlet goods. 
And hasten to the fringe of cottonwoods 
Where rose the great man's lodge smoke. Then 

they knew ; 
For thus with gifts the Bloods were wont to 

woo 
The daughter through the sire. 



THE NET IS CAST 45 

The white sun burned 
Midmost the morning steep when he returned 
Without his load and humming as he went. 
And hour by hour he squatted in his tent 
And stared upon the fire ; save now and then 
He stirred himself to lift the flap again 
And cast an anxious gaze across the snows 
Where stood the chieftain's lodge. And well did 

those 
Who saw him know what sight he hoped to see ; 
For 'twas the custom that the bride-to-be 
Should carry food to him she chose to wed. 
Meanwhile, with seemly caution, be it said, 
Fink's men enjoyed a comedy, and laid 
Sly wagers on the coming of the maid — 
She would! She wouldn't! So the brief day 

waned. 

Now when the sun, a frosty specter maned 
With corruscating vapors, lingered low 
And shadows lay like steel upon the snow, 
An old squaw, picking faggots in the brush, 
Saw that which set her shrieking in the hush. 
"They come! They come!" Then someone 

shouted "Crows!" 
The town spewed tumult, men with guns and 

bows, 



46 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Half clad and roaring; shrill hysteric wives 
With sticks of smoking firewood, axes, knives ; 
Dogs, bristle-necked and snarling. So they 

pressed 
To meet a foe, as from a stricken nest 
The hornet swarm boils over. 

Blinking, dazed 
With sudden light and panic fear, they gazed 
About the frozen waste ; and then they saw 
Eight laden ponies filing up the draw. 
Their nostrils steaming, slack of neck and slow. 
Behind them, stumbling in the broken snow. 
Three weary trappers trudged, while in the 

lead 
Strode Carpenter. A goodly sight, indeed ! 
Upstanding, eagle-faced and eagle-eyed, 
The ease of latent power in his stride. 
He dwarfed the panting pony that he led ; 
And when the level sunlight 'round his head 
Made glories in the frosted beard and hair, 
Some Gothic fighting god seemed walking there. 
Strayed from the dim Hercynian woods of old. 

How little of a story can be told ! 

Let him who knows what happens in the seed 

Before the sprout breaks sunward, make the deed 



THE NET IS CAST 47 

A plummet for the dreaming deeps that surged 
Beneath the surface ere the deed emerged 
For neat appraisal by the rule of thumb ! 
The best of Clio is forever dumb, 
To human ears at least. Nor shall the Song 
Presume to guess and tell how all night long, 
While roared the drunken orgy and the trade, 
Doom quickened in the fancy of a maid, 
The daughter of the Long Knife ; how she saw, 
Serenely moving through a spacious awe 
Behind shut lids where never came the brawl, 
That shining one, magnificently tall, 
A day-crowned mortal brother of the sun. 
Suffice it here that, when the night was done 
And morning, like an uproar in the east. 
Aroused the town still heavy with the feast. 
All men might see what whimsic, fatal bloom 
A soil, dream-plowed and seeded in the gloom. 
Had nourished unto blowing in the day. 

'Twas then the girl appeared and took her way 

Across the snow with hesitating feet. 

She bore a little pot of steaming meat ; 

And when midmost the open space, she turned 

And held it up to where the morning burned, 

As one who begs a blessing of the skies. 

Unconscious of the many peeping eyes, 



48 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Erect, with wrapt uplifted face she stood — 
A miracle of shapely maidenhood — 
Before the flaming god. And many heard, 
Or seemed to hear by piecing word to word, 
The prayer she muttered to the wintry sky : 
"0 Sun, behold a maiden! Pure am I! 
Look kindly on the little gift I give ; 
For, save you smile upon it, what can live? 
Bright Father, hear a maiden!" Then, as one 
Who finds new courage for a task begun, 
She turned and hastened to the deed. 

They say 
There was no dearth of gossiping that day 
Among the lodges. Shrewish tongues there were 
That clacked no happy prophecies of her. 
And many wondered at the chieftain's whim. 
The Long Knife's girl had wrought a spell on 

him; 
Why else then was he silent? See her shrink 
A moment there before the tent of Fink, 
As one who feels a sudden sleety blast! 
But look again ! She starts, and hurries past ! 
All round the circled village, lodges yawn 
To see how brazen in the stare of dawn 
A petted girl may be. For now, behold! 
Was ever maiden of the Bloods so bold ? 



w 



THE NET IS CAST 49 

She stops before another tent and stoops, 
Her fingers feeUng for the buckskin loops 
That bind the rawhide flap. 'Tis opened wide. 
The slant white light of morning falls inside, 
And half the town may witness at whose feet 
She sets the little pot of steaming meat — 
'Tis Carpenter! 



V 

THE QUARREL 

Perceptibly, at length, 
The days grew longer, and the winter's strength 
Increased to fury. Down across the flat 
The blizzards bellowed ; and the people sat 
Fur-robed about the smoky fires that stung 
Their eyes to streaming, when a freak gust flung 
The sharp reek back with flaws of powdered snow. 
And much the old men talked of long ago, 
Invoking ghostly Winters from the Past, 
Till cold snap after cold snap followed fast. 
And none might pile his verbal snow so deep 
But some athletic memory could heap 
The drifts a trifle higher; give the cold 
A greater rigor in the story told ; 
Put bellows to a wind already high. 
And ever greater reverence thereby 
The old men won from gaping youths, who heard. 
Like marginalia to the living word. 
The howling of the poplars tempest-bent. 
The smoke-flap cracking sharply at the vent, 
so 



THE QUARREL 51 

The lodge poles creaking eerily. And O! 

The happy chance of living long ago, 

Of having wrinkles now and being sires 

With many tales to tell around the fires 

Of days when things were bigger! All night 

long 
White hands came plucking at the buckskin thong 
That bound the door-flap, and the writhing dark 
Was shrill with spirits. By the snuffling bark 
Of dogs men knew that homesick ghosts were 

there. 
And often in a whirl of chilling air 
The weird ones entered, though the flap still held, 
Built up in smoke the shapes they knew of eld, 
Grew thin and long to vanish as they came. 

Now had the scandal, like a sudden flame 
Fed fat with grasses, perished in the storm. 
The fundamental need of keeping warm 
Sufficed the keenest gossip for a theme ; 
And whimsies faded like a warrior's dream 
When early in the dawn the foemen cry. 

The time when calves are black had blustered 

by- 
A weary season — since the village saw 
The chief's wife pitching for her son-in-law 



52 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The nuptial lodge she fashioned. Like a bow 
That feels the arrow's head, the moon hung 

low 
That evening when they gave the wedding 

gifts ; 
And men had seen it glaring through the rifts 
Of wintry war as up the east it reeled, 
A giant warrior's battle-bitten shield — 
But now it braved no more the charging air. 
Meanwhile the lodge of Carpenter stood there 
Beside the chieftain's, huddled in the snows, 
And, like a story everybody knows, 
Was little heeded now. 

But there was one 
Who seldom noted what was said or done 
Among his comrades ; he would sit and look 
Upon the fire, as one who reads a book 
Of woeful doings, ever on the brink 
Of ultimate disaster. It was Fink : 
And seeing this, Talbeau was sick at heart 
With dreading that his friends might drift apart 
And he be lost, because he loved them both. 
But, knowing well Mike's temper, he was loath 
To broach the matter. Also, knowing well 
That silence broods upon the hottest hell, 
He prayed that Fink might curse. 



THE QUARREL 53 

So worried past 
The days of that estrangement. Then at last 
One night when round their tent the blizzard 

roared 
And, nestled in their robes, the others snored, 
Talbeau could bear the strain no more and spoke. 
He opened with a random little joke. 
Like some starved hunter trying out the range 
Of precious game where all the land is strange ; 
And, as the hunter, missing, hears the grim 
And spiteful echo-rifles mocking him, 
His own unmirthful laughter mocked Talbeau. 
He could have touched across the ember-glow 
Mike's brooding face — yet Mike was far away. 
And O that nothing more than distance lay 
Between them — any distance with an end ! 
How tireless then in running to his friend 
A man might be! For suddenly he knew 
That Mike would have him choose between the 

two. 
How could he choose 'twixt Carpenter and Fink.? 
How idle were a choice 'twixt food and drink 
When, choosing neither, one were sooner dead ! 

Thus torn within, and hoarse with tears unshed, 
He strove again to find his comrade's heart : 
"O damn it, Mike, don't make us drift apart! 



54 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Don't do it, Mike ! This ain't a killin' fuss, 

And hadn't ought to faze the three of us 

That's weathered many a rough-and-tumble fight ! 

W'y don't you mind that hell-a-poppin' night 

At Baton Rouge three years ago last fall — 

The time we fit the whole damned dancin' hall 

And waded out nigh belly-deep in men ? 

O who'd have said a girl could part us, then ? 

And, Mike, that fracas in the Vide Poche dive! 

Can you forget it long as you're alive ? — 

A merry time! Us strollin' arm-in-arm 

From drink to drink, not calculatin' harm, 

But curious, because St. Louis town 

Fair boiled with greasy mountain men, come 

down 
All brag and beaver, howlin' for a spree! 
And then — you mind ? — a feller jostled me — 
'Twas at the bar — a chap all bones and big. 
Says he in French : 'You eater of a pig, 
Make room for mountain men!' And then says 

you 
In Irish, aimin* where the whiskers grew. 
And landin' fair : * You eater of a dog, 
Make room for boatmen!' Like a punky log 
That's water-soaked, he dropped. What hap- 
pened then? 
A cyclone in a woods of mountain men — 



THE QUARREL 55 

That's what! O Mike, you can't forget it 

now! 
And what in hell's a woman,"anyhow, 
To memories like that?" 

So spoke Talbeau, 
And, pausing, heard the hissing of the snow, 
The snoring of the sleepers, and the cries 
Of blizzard-beaten poplars. Still Fink's eyes 
Upon the crumbling embers pored intent. 
Then momently, or so it seemed, there went 
Across that alien gaze a softer light. 
As when bleak windows in a moony night 
Flush briefly with a candle borne along. 
And suddenly the weary hope grew strong 
In him who saw the glimmer, and he said : 
"O Mike, I see the good old times ain't dead! 
Why don't you fellers shoot the whisky cup 
The way you used to do?" 

Then Fink looked up. 
'Twas bad the way the muscles twitched and 

worked 
About his mouth, and in his eyes there lurked 
Some crouchant thing. "To hell wid you!" he 

cried. 
So love and hate that night slept side by side; 



56 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

And hate slept well, but love lay broad awake 
And, like a woman, for the other's sake 
Eked out the lonely hours with worrying. 

Now came a heartsick yearning for the spring 
Upon Talbeau ; for surely this bad dream 
Would vanish with the ice upon the stream, 
Old times be resurrected with the grass ! 
But would the winter ever, ever pass. 
The howling of the blizzard ever cease ? 
So often now he dreamed of hearing geese 
Remotely honking in the rain-washed blue ; 
And ever when the blur of dawn broke through 
The scudding rack, he raised the flap to see. 
By sighting through a certain forked tree, 
How much the sun made northward. 

Then, one day, 
The curtain of the storm began to fray ; 
The poplars' howling softened to a croon ; 
The sun set clear, and dusk revealed the moon — 
A thin-blown bubble in a crystal bowl. 
All night, as 'twere the frozen prairie's soul 
That voiced a hopeless longing for the spring, 
The wolves assailed with mournful question- 
ing 
The starry deeps of that tremendous hush. 



THE QUARREL 57 

Dawn wore the mask of May — a rosy flush. 
It seemed the magic of a single bird 
Might prove the seeing of the eye absurd 
And make the heaped-up winter billow green. 
On second thought, one knew the air was keen — 
A whetted edge in gauze. The village fires 
Serenely builded tenuous gray spires 
That vanished in the still blue deeps of awe. 
All prophets were agreed upon a thaw. 
And when the morning stood a spearlength high, 
There grew along the western rim of sky 
A bank of cloud that had a rainy look. 
It mounted slowly. Then the warm chinook 
Began to breathe a melancholy drowse 
And sob among the naked poplar boughs. 
As though the prairie dreamed a dream of June 
And knew it for a dream. All afternoon 
The gale increased. The sun went down blood- 
red ; 
The young moon, perilously fragile, fled 
To early setting. And the long night roared. 

Tempestuously broke the day and poured 
An intermittent glory through the rifts 
Amid the driven fog. The sodden drifts 
Already grooved and withered in the blast ; 
And when the flying noon stared down aghast. 



58 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The bluffs behind the village boomed with 

flood. 
What magic in that sound to stir the blood 
Of winter-weary men ! For now the spring 
No longer seemed a visionary thing, 
But that which any morning might bestow. 
And most of all that magic moved Talbeau ; 
For, scrutinizing Fink, he thought he saw 
Some reflex of that February thaw — 
A whit less curling of the upper lip. 
O could it be returning comradeship, [ 
That April not beholden to the moon 
Nor chatteled to the sun ? 

That afternoon 
They played at euchre. Even Fink sat in ; 
And though he showed no eagerness to win, 
Forgot the trumps and played his bowers wild, 
There were not lacking moments when he smiled, 
A hesitating smile 'twixt wan and grim. 
It seemed his stubborn mood embarrassed him 
Because regret now troubled it with shame. 

The great wind died at midnight. Morning 

came. 
Serene and almost indolently warm — 
As when an early April thunder storm 



THE QUARREL 59 

Has cleansed the night and vanished with the 

gloom ; 
When one can feel the imminence of bloom 
As 'twere a spirit in the orchard trees; 
When, credulous of blossom, come the bees 
To grumble 'round the seepages of sap. 
So mused Talbeau while, pushing back the flap, 
Instinctively he listened for a bird 
To fill the hush. Then presently he heard — 
And 'twas the only sound in all the world — 
The trickle of the melting snow that purled 
And tinkled in the bluffs above the town. 
The sight of ragged Winter patched with brown, 
The golden peace and, palpitant therein, 
That water note, spun silverly and thin, 
Begot a wild conviction in the man : 
The wounded Winter weakened ; now began 
The reconciliation ! Hate would go 
And, even as the water from the snow, 
Old comradeship come laughing back again ! 

All morning long he pondered, while the men 
Played seven-up. And scarce a trick was 

played 
But someone sang a snatch of song or made 
A merry jest. And when the game was balked 
By one who quite forgot his hand, and talked 



6o THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Of things in old St. Louis, none demurred. 
And thus, by noon, it seemed the lightest word 
Of careless salutation would avail 
To give a happy ending to the tale 
Of clouded friendship. So he 'rose and went, 
By studied indirection, to the tent 
Of Carpenter, as one who takes the air. 
And, as he raised the flap and entered there, 
A sudden gale of laughter from the men 
Blew after him. What music in it then ! 
What mockery, when memory should raise 
So often in the coming nights and days 
The ruthless echo of it 1 

Click on click 
Amid the whirlwind finish of a trick 
The cards fell fast, while King and Queen and Ace, 
With meaner trumps for hounds, pursued the chase 
Of wily Knave and lurking Deuce and Ten ; 
When suddenly the game-enchanted men 
Were conscious of a shadow in the place. 
And glancing up they saw the smiling face 
Of Carpenter, thrust in above Talbeau's. 
"How goes it. Boys ?" said he; and gaily those 
Returned the greeting. "Howdy, Mike!" he 

said; '"' ' 
And with a sullen hanging of the head 



THE QUARREL 6i 

Fink mumbled "Howdy!" GrufF — but what 

of that ? 
One can not doflF displeasure like a hat — 
'Twould dwindle snow-like. 

Nothing else would do 
But Carpenter should play. Now Fink played 

too; 
And, having brought his cherished ones together, 
Talbeau surrendered to the languid weather 
And, dreamily contented, watched the sport. 
All afternoon the pictured royal court 
Pursued its quarry in the mimic hunt; 
And Carpenter, now gayer than his wont. 
Lost much ; while Fink, with scarce a word to say, 
His whole attention fixed upon the play, 
Won often. So it happened, when the sun 
Was near to setting, that the day seemed won 
For friendliness, however stood the game. 
But even then that Unseen Player came 
Who stacks the shuffled deck of circumstance 
And, playing wild the Joker men call Chance, 
Defeats the Aces of our certainty. 

The cards were dealt and Carpenter bid three. 
The next man passed the bid, and so the next. 
Then Fink, a trifle hesitant and vexed, 



62 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Bid four on spades. And there was one who said 
In laughing banter: "Mike, I'll bet my head 
As how them spades of your'n '11 dig a hole !" 
And in some subtle meaning of the soul 
The wag was more a prophet than he knew. 

Fink held the Ace and Deuce, and that made two : 
His black King scored another point with 

Knave. 
But Carpenter, to whom that Weird One gave 
A band of lesser trumps to guard his Ten, 
Lay low until the Queen had passed, and then 
Swept in a last fat trick for Game, and scored. 
And now the players slapped their knees and 

roared : 
"You're set ! You're in the hole ! He set you, 

Mike!" 

Then suddenly they saw Fink crouch to strike ; 
And ere they comprehended what they saw, 
There came a thud of knuckles on a jaw 
And Carpenter rolled over on the ground. 
One moment in a breathless lapse of sound 
The stricken man strove groggily to 'rise, 
The emptiness of wonder in his eyes 
Turned dreamily with seeming unconcern 
Upon Mike's face, where now began to burn 



THE QUARREL 63 

The livid murder-lust. 'Twixt breath and breath 

The hush and immobihty of death 

Made there a timeless picture. Then a yell, 

As of a wild beast charging, broke the spell. 

Fink sprang to crush, but midway met Talbeau 

Who threw him as a collie dog may throw 

A raging bull. But Mike was up again. 

And wielding thrice the might of common men. 

He gripped the little man by nape and thigh 

And lightly lifted him and swung him high 

And flung him ; and the smitten tent went down. 

Then 'rose a roar that roused the teeming town. 

And presently a shouting rabble surged 

About the wreck, whence tumblingly emerged 

A knot of men who grappled Fink and clung. 

Prodigiously he rose beneath them, flung 

His smashing arms, man-laden, forth and back ; 

But stubbornly they gripped him, like a pack 

That takes uncowed the maulings of a bear. 

"Let Carpenter get up!" they cried. "Fight 

fair! 
Fight fair I Fight fair!" 

Quite leisurely the while 
The stricken man arose, a sleepy smile 
About his quiet eyes. Indeed, he seemed 
As one but lately wakened, who has dreamed 



64 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A pleasing dream. But when he stroked his 

beard 
And gazed upon his fingers, warmly smeared 
With crimson from the trickle at his jaw, 
His eyes went eagle-keen with what they saw. 
The stupor passed. He hastily untied 
His buckskin shirt and, casting it aside, 
Stood naked to. the hips. The tumult ceased 
As, panting hard, the voyageurs released 
Their struggling charge and, ducking to a swing 
Of those freed arms, sought safety, scamper- 
ing. 

Fink also stripped his shirt ; and as the man 
Stood thus revealed, a buzz of wonder ran 
Amid the jostling rabble. Few there were 
Who in that moment envied Carpenter, 
Serenely poised and waiting placid browed : 
For shall a lonely cedar brave a cloud 
Bulged big and shapen to the cyclone's whirl? 
Lo, even as the body of a girl. 
The body of the blond was smooth and white ; 
But vaguely, as one guesses at the might 
Of silent waters running swift and deep, 
One guessed what stores of power lay asleep 
Beneath the long fleet lines of trunk and limb. 
Thus God had made experiment with him ; 



THE QUARREL 65 

And, groping for the old Adamic dream, 

Had found his patterns in the tree and stream, 

As Fink's in whirling air and hungry flame. 

Now momently the picture there became 

A blur of speed. Mike rushed. The tiptoe town 

Craned eagerly to see a man go down 

Before that human thunder gust. But lo! 

As bends a sapling when the great winds blow, 

The other squatted, deftly swayed aside. 

And over him the slashing blows went wide. 

Fink sprawled. But hardly had a spreading 

roar 
O'errun the town, when silence as before 
Possessed the scene ; for Mike flashed back again 
With flame-like speed, and suddenly the men 
Clenched, leaning neck to neck. 

Without a word. 
Like horn-locked bulls that strive before the herd. 
They balanced might with might; till Mike's 

hands whipped 
Beneath the other's arm-pits, met and gripped 
Across the broad white shoulders. Then began 
The whole prodigious engine of the man 
To bulge and roll and darken with the strain. 
Like rivulets fed suddenly with rain, 



66 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The tall one's thews rose ropily and flowed 
Converging might against the growing load 
Of those tremendous arms that strove to crush. 

Their labored breathing whistled in the hush. 
One saw the blond man's face go bluish red, 
As deeper, deeper sank Fink's shaggy head 
Amid his heaped-up shoulder brawn. One knew 
That very soon the taller of the two 
Must yield and take that terrible embrace. 

A tense hypnotic quiet filled the place. 
The men were like two wrestlers in a dream 
That holds an endless moment ; till a scream 
Fell stab-like on the hush. One saw Talbeau, 
Jaws set, hands clenched, eyes wild, and bending 

low. 
As though he too were struggling, slowly bowed 
Beneath Fink's might. And then — 

What ailed the crowd ? 
Swept over by a flurry of surprise. 
They swayed and jostled, shouting battle-cries 
And quips and jeers of savage merriment. 
One moment they had seen the tall man bent. 
About to break : then, falling back a-haunch. 
His feet had plunged against the other's paunch 
And sent Fink somersaulting. 



THE QUARREL Sj 

Once again 
A silence fell as, leaping up, the men 
Were mingled briefly in a storm of blows. 
Now, tripping like a dancer on his toes. 
The blond man sparred ; while, like a baited bear, 
Half blinded with the lust to crush and tear. 
Fink strove to clutch that something lithe and 

sleek 
That stung and fled and stung. Upon his cheek 
A flying shadow laid a vivid bruise; 
Another — and his brow began to ooze 
Slow drops that spattered on his bearded jaw. 
Again that shadow passed — his mouth went raw. 
And like a gunshot wound it gaped and bled. 

Fink roared with rage and plunged with lowered 

head 
Upon this thing that tortured, hurled it back 
Amid the crowd. One heard a thud and smack 
Of rapid blows on bone and flesh — and then 
One saw the tall man stagger clear again 
With gushing nostrils and a bloody grin, 
And down his front the whiteness of the skin 
Was striped with flowing crimson to the waist. 
Unsteadily he wheeled about and faced 
The headlong hate of his antagonist. 
Now toe to toe and fist to flying fist, 



68 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

They played at give and take ; and all the while 
The blond man smiled that riddle of a smile, 
As one who meditates upon a jest. 

Yet surely he was losing ! Backward pressed, 

He strove in vain to check his raging foe. 

Fink lunged and straightened to a shoulder 

blow 
With force enough to knock a bison down. 
The other dodged it, squatting. Then the 

town 
Discovered what a smile might signify. 
For, even as the futile blow went by, 
One saw the lithe white form shoot up close in, 
A hooked white arm jab upward to the chin — 
Once — twice — and yet again. With eyes a- 

stare. 
His hands aloft and clutching at the air. 
Fink tottered backward, limply lurched and fell. 

Then came to pass what stilled the rabble's 

yell. 

So strange it was. And 'round the fires that 

night 
The wisest warriors, talking of the fight, 
Could not explain what happened at the end. 
No friend, they said, makes war upon a friend ; 



THE QUARREL 69 

Nor does a foe have pity on a foe : 

And yet the tall white chief had bathed with 

snow 
The bloody mouth and battered cheek and brow 
Of him who fell I 

Queer people, anyhow, 
The Long Knives were — and hard to under- 
stand ! 



VI 

THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 

Bull-roaring March had swept across the land, 
And now the evangelic goose and crane. 
Forerunners of the messianic Rain, 
Went crying through the wilderness aloft. 
Fog hid the sun, and yet the snow grew soft. 
The monochrome of sky and poplar bough. 
Drab tracery on drab, was stippled now 
With swelling buds ; and slushy water ran 
Upon the ice-bound river that began 
To stir and groan as one about to wake. 

Now, while they waited for the ice to break. 
The trappers fashioned bull-boats — willow 

A wrought 
To bowl-like frames, and over these drawn taut 
Green bison hides with bison sinew sewn. 
And much they talked about the Yellowstone : 
How fared their comrades yonder since the fall ? 
And would they marvel at the goodly haul 
Of beaver pelts these crazy craft should bring ^ 
And what of Ashley starting north that spring 
70 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 71 

With yet another hundred ? Did his prows 
Already nose the flood ? — Ah, cherry boughs 
About St. Louis now were loud with bees 
And white with bloom ; and wading to the knees, 
The cattle browsed along the fresh green sloughs ! 
Yes, even now the leaning cordelle crews 
With word from home (so far away, alas !) 
Led north the marching armies of the grass. 
As 'twere the heart of Summertime they towed ! 

So while they shaped the willow frames and sewed 
The bison hides, the trappers' hearts were light. 
They talked no longer now about the fight. 
That story, shaped and fitted part by part, 
Unwittingly was rounded into art. 
And, being art, already it was old. 
WTien this bleak time should seem the age of gold. 
These men, grown gray and garrulous, might tell 
Of wondrous doings on the Musselshell — 
How Carpenter, the mighty, fought, and how 
Great Fink went down. But spring was coming 

now. 
And who's for backward looking in the spring ? 

Yet one might see that Mike still felt the sting 
Of that defeat ; for often he would brood, 
Himself the center of a solitude 



72 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Wherein the friendly chatter of the band 

Was Hke a wind that makes a lonely land 

Seem lonelier. And much it grieved Talbeau 

To see a haughty comrade humbled so ; 

And, even more, he feared what wounded pride 

Might bring to pass, before their boats could 

ride 
The dawnward reaches of the April floods 
And leave behind the village of the Bloods ; 
For now it seemed a curse was on the place. 
Talbeau was like a man who views a race 
With all to lose : so slowly crept the spring, 
So surely crawled some formless fatal thing, 
He knew not what it was. But should it win, 
Life could not be again as it had been 
And spring would scarcely matter any more. 
The daybreak often found him at the shore, 
A ghostly figure in the muggy light. 
Intent to see what progress over night 
The shackled river made against the chain. 

And then at last, one night, a dream of rain 
Came vividly upon him. How it poured ! 
A witch's garden was the murk that roared 
With bursting purple bloom. 'Twas April 

weather. 
And he and Mike and Bill were boys together 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 73 

Beneath the sounding shingle roof at home. 
He smelled the odor of the drinking loam 
Still rolling mellow from the recent share; 
And he could feel the meadow greening there 
Beyond the apple orchard. Then he 'woke 
And raised the flap. A wraith of thunder-smoke 
Was trailing off along the prairie's rim. 
Half dreaming yet, the landscape puzzled him. 
What made the orchard seem so tall and lean ? 
And surely yonder meadow had been green 
A moment since ! What made it tawny now ? 
And yonder where the billows of the plow 
Should glisten fat and sleek — ? 

The drowsy spell 
Dropped off and left him on the Musselshell 
Beneath the old familiar load of care. 
He looked aloft. The stars had faded there. 
The sky was cloudless. No, one lonely fleece 
Serenely floated in the spacious peace 
And from the distance caught prophetic light. 
In truth he had heard thunder in the night 
And dashing rain; for all the land was soaked. 
And where the withered drifts had lingered, 

smoked 
The naked soil. But since the storm was gone. 
How strange that still low thunder mumbled on — 



74 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

An unresolving cadence marred at whiles 

By dull explosions ! Now for miles and miles 

Along the vale he saw a trail of steam 

That marked the many windings of the stream, 

As though the river simmered. Then he knew. 

It was the sound of April breaking through ! 

The resurrection thunder had begun ! 

The ice was going out, and spring had won 

The creeping race with dread ! 

His ringing cheers 
Brought out the blinking village by the ears 
To share the news; and though they could not 

know 
What ecstasy of triumph moved Talbeau, 
Yet lodge on lodge took up the joyous cry 
That set the dogs intoning to the sky, 
The drenched cayuses shrilly nickering. 
So man and beast proclaimed the risen Spring 
Upon the Musselshell. 

And all day long 
The warring River sang its ocean song. 
And all that night the spirits of the rain 
Made battle music with a shattered chain 
And raged upon the foe. And did one gaze 
Upon that struggle through the starry haze, 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 75 

One saw enormous bodies heaved and tossed, 
Where stubbornly the Yotuns of the Frost 
With shoulder set to shoulder strove to stem 
The wild invasion rolling over them. 
Nor in the morning was the struggle done. 
Serenely all that day the doughty Sun, 
A banished king returning to his right. 
Beheld his legions pouring to the fight, 
Exhaustless ; and his cavalries that rode — 
With hoofs that rumbled and with manes that 

flowed 
White in the war gust — crashing on the foe. 
And all that night the din of overthrow 
Arose to heaven from the stricken field ; 
A sound as of the shock of spear and shield, 
Of wheels that trundled and the feet of hordes. 
Of shrieking horses mad among the swords, 
Hurrahing of attackers and attacked, 
And sounds as of a city that is sacked 
When lust for loot runs roaring through the night. 
Dawn looked upon no battle, but a flight. 
And when the next day broke, the spring flood 

flowed 
Like some great host that takes the homeward 

road 
With many spoils — a glad triumphal march, 
Of which the turquoise heaven was the arch. 



76 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Now comes a morning when the tents are down 

And packed for travel ; and the whole Blood town 

Is out along the waterfront to see 

The trappers going. Dancing as with glee, 

Six laden bull-boats feel the April tide 

And sweep away. Along the riverside 

The straggling, shouting rabble keeps abreast 

A little while ; but, longer than the rest, 

A weeping runner races with the swirl 

And loses slowly. 'Tis the Long Knife's girl, 

Whom love perhaps already makes aware 

How flows unseen a greater river there — 

The never-to-be-overtaken days. 

And now she pauses at the bend to gaze 

Upon the black boats dwindling down the long 

Dawn-gilded reach. A merry trapper's song 

Comes liltingly to mock her, and a hand 

Waves back farewell. Now 'round a point of land 

The bull-boats disappear; and that is all — 

Save only that long waiting for the fall 

When he would come again. 

All day they swirled 
Northeastwardly. The undulating world 
Flowed by them — wooded headland, greening 

vale 
And naked hill — as in a fairy tale 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 77 

Remembered in a dream. And when the flare 
Of sunset died behind them, and the air 
Went weird and deepened to a purple gloom, 
They saw the white Enchanted Castles loom 
Above them, slowly pass and drift a-rear, 
Dissolving in the starry crystal sphere 
'Mid which they seemed suspended. 

Late to camp. 
They launched while yet the crawling valley damp 
Made islands of the distant hills and hid 
The moaning flood. The Half Way Pyramid 
That noon stared in upon them from the south. 
'Twas starlight when they camped at Hell Creek's 

mouth, 
Among those hills where evermore in vain 
The Spring comes wooing, and the April rain 
Is tears upon a tomb. And once again 
The dead land echoed to the songs of men 
Bound dayward when the dawn was but a streak. 
Halfway to noon they sighted Big Dry Creek, 
Not choked with grave dust now, but carolling 
The universal music of the spring. 
Then when the day was midway down the sky, 
They reached the Milk. And howsoe'er the 

eye 
Might sweep that valley with a far-flung gaze, 
It found no spot uncovered with a maze 



78 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Of bison moving lazily at browse — 
Scarce wilder than a herd of dairy cows 
That know their herdsman. 

Now the whole band willed 
To tarry. So they beached their boats and killed 
Three fatling heifers ; sliced the juicy rumps 
For broiling over embers ; set the humps 
And loins to roast on willow spits, and threw 
The hearts and livers in a pot to stew 
Against the time of dulling appetites. 
And when the stream ran opalescent lights 
And in a scarlet glow the new moon set, 
The feast began. And some were eating yet. 
And some again in intervals of sleep, 
When upside down above the polar steep 
The Dipper hung. And many tales were told 
And there was hearty laughter as of old, 
With Fink's guffaw to swell it now and then. 
It seemed old times were coming back again ; 
That truly they had launched upon a trip 
Whereof the shining goal was comradeship : 
And tears were in the laughter of Talbeau, 
So glad was he. For how may mortals know 
Their gladness, save they sense it by the fear 
That whispers how the very thing held dear 
May pass away .? 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 79 

The smoky dawn was lit, 
And, suddenly become aware of It, 
A flock of blue cranes, dozing on the sand, 
With startled cries awoke the sprawling band 
And took the misty air with moaning wings. 
Disgruntled with the chill drab scheme of things. 
Still half asleep and heavy with the feast, 
The trappers launched their boats. But when 

the east 
Burned rosily, therefrom a raw wind blew, 
And ever with the growing day it grew 
Until the stream rose choppily and drove 
The fleet ashore. Camped snugly in a grove 
Of cottonwoods, they slept. And when the gale, 
Together with the light, began to fail. 
They 'rose and ate and set a-drlft again. 

It seemed the solid world that mothers men 
With twilight and the falling moon had passed, 
And there was nothing but a hollow vast. 
By time-outlasting stars remotely lit, 
And they who at the central point of it 
Hung motionless ; while, rather sensed than seen, 
The phantoms of a world that had been green 
Stole by in silence — shapes that once were 

trees. 
Black wraiths of bushes, airy traceries 



8o THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Remembering the hills. Then sleep made swift 
The swinging of the Dipper and the lift 
Of stars that dwell upon the day's frontier; 
Until at length the wheeling hollow sphere 
Began to fill. And just at morningshine 
They landed at the Little Porcupine. 

Again they slept and, putting ofF at night, 
They passed the Elk Horn Prairie on the right 
Halfway to dawn and Wolf Creek. One night 

more 
Had vanished when they slept upon the shore 
Beside the Poplar's mouth. And three had 

fled 
When, black against the early morning red, 
The Fort that Henry builded heard their calls. 
And sentries' rifles spurting from the walls 
Spilled drawling echoes. Then the gates swung 

wide 
And shouting trappers thronged the riverside 
To welcome back the homing voyageurs. 

That day was spent in sorting out the furs, 
With eager talk of how the winter went ; 
And with the growing night grew merriment. 
The hump and haunches of a bison cow 
Hung roasting at the heaped-up embers now 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 8i 

On Henry's hearth. The backlog whined and 

popped 
And, sitting squat or lounging elbow-propped, 
Shrewd traders in the merchandise of tales 
Held traffic, grandly careless how the scales 
Tiptilted with a slight excessive weight. 
And when the roast was finished, how they ate ! 
And there was that which set them singing too 
Against the deep bass music of the flue. 
While catgut screamed ecstatic in the lead. 
Encouraging the voices used and keyed 
To vast and windy spaces. 

Later came 
A gentler mood when, staring at the flame, 
Men ventured reminiscences and spoke 
About Kentucky people or the folk 
Back yonder in Virginia or the ways 
They knew in old St. Louis ; till the blaze 
Fell blue upon the hearth, and in the gloom 
And melancholy stillness of the room 
They heard the wind of midnight wail outside. 
Then there was one who poked the logs and cried : 
"Is this a weeping drunk ^ I swear I'm like 
To tear my hair ! Sing something lively, Mike !" 
And Fink said nought ; but after poring long 
Upon the logs, began an Irish song — 



82 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A gently grieving thing like April rain, 

That while it wakes old memories of pain, 

Wakes also odors of the violet. 

A broken heart, it seemed, could ne'er forget 

The eyes of Nora, dead upon the hill. 

And when he ceased the men sat very still, 

As hearing yet the low caressing note 

Of some lost angel mourning in his throat. 

And afterwhile Mike spoke : " Shure, now," said 

he, 
"'Tis in a woman's eyes shtrong liquors be; 
And if ye drink av thim — and if ye drink — " 
For just a moment in the face of Fink 
Talbeau beheld that angel yearning through ; 
And wondering if Carpenter saw too. 
He looked, and lo ! the guileless fellow — grinned ! 

As dreaming water, stricken by a wind. 
Gives up the imaged heaven that it knows. 
So Fink's face lost the angel. He arose 
And left the place without a word to say. 

The morrow was a perfect April day; 

Nor might one guess — so friendly was the sun, 

So kind the air — what thread at length was 

spun. 
What shears were opened now to sever it. 
No sullen mood was Mike's. His biting wit 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 83 

Made gay the trappers busy with the fur; 
Though more and ever more on Carpenter 
His sallies fell, with ever keener whet. 
And Carpenter, unskilled in banter, met 
The sharper sally with the broader grin. 
But, by and by, Mike made a jest, wherein 
Some wanton innuendo lurked and leered, 
About the Long Knife's girl. The place went 

weird 
With sudden silence as the tall man strode 
Across the room, nor lacked an open road 
Among the men. A glitter in his stare 
Belied the smile he bore ; and, pausing there 
With stiffened index finger raised and held 
Before the jester's eyes, as though he spelled 
The slow words out, he said : "We'll have no 

jokes 
In just that way about our women folks !'* 
And Fink guffawed. 

They would have fought again, 
Had not the Major stepped between the men 
And talked the crisis by. And when 'twas past, 
Talbeau, intent to end the strife at last. 
Somehow persuaded Fink to make amends. 
And, as a proof that henceforth they were 
friends, 



84 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Proposed the shooting of the whisky cup. 
"Shure, b'y," said Mike, "we'll toss a copper up 
And if 'tis heads I'll thry me cunning first. 
As fer me joke, the tongue of me is cursed 
Wid double j'ints — so let it be forgot !" 
And so it was agreed. 

They cleared a spot 
And flipped a coin that tinkled as it fell. 
A tiny sound — yet, like a midnight bell 
That sets wild faces pressing at the pane, 
Talbeau would often hear that coin again, 
In vivid dreams, to waken terrified. 
'Twas heads. 

And now the tall man stepped aside 
And, beckoning Talbeau, he whispered : "Son, 
If anything should happen, keep my gun 
For old time's sake. And when the Major 

pays 
In old St. Louis, drink to better days 
When friends were friends, with what he's owing 

me." 
Whereat the little man laughed merrily 
And said : "Old Horse, you're off your feed 

to-day; 
But if you've sworn an oath to blow your pay, 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 85 

I guess the three of us can make it good ! 
Mike couldn't miss a target if he would." ^ 
"Well, maybe so," said Carpenter, and smiled. 

A windless noon was brooding on the wild 
And in the clearing, eager for the show, 
The waiting trappers chatted. Now Talbeau 
Stepped ofF the range. The tall man took his 

place, 
The grin of some droll humor on his face ; 
And when his friend was reaching for his head 
To set the brimming cup thereon, he said : 
"You won't forget I gave my gun to you^ 
And all my blankets and my fixin's too ?" 
The small man laughed and, turning round, he 

cried : 
"We're ready, Mike!" 

A murmur ran and died 
Along the double line of eager men. 
Fink raised his gun, but set it down again 
And blew a breath and said : "I'm gittin' dhry I 
So howld yer noddle shtiddy, Bill, me b'y, 
And don't ye shpill me whisky ! " Cedar-straight 
The tall man stood, the calm of brooding Fate 
About him. Aye, and often to the end 
Talbeau would see that vision of his friend — 



86 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A man-flower springing from the fresh green sod, 
While, round about, the bushes burned with God 
And mating peewees fluted in the brush. 

They heard a gun lock clicking in the hush. 
They saw Fink sighting — heard the rifle crack. 
And saw beneath the spreading powder rack' 
The tall man pitching forward. 

Echoes fled 
Like voices in a panic. Then Mike said : 
"Bejasus, and ye've shpilled me whisky, Bill!" 

A catbird screamed. The crowd stood very still 
As though bewitched. 

"And can't ye hear?*' bawled Fink; 
"I say, I'm dhry — and now ye've shpilled me 

drink!" 
He stooped to blow the gasses from his gun. 

And now men saw Talbeau. They saw him run 
And stoop to peer upon the prostrate man 
Where now the mingling blood and whisky ran 
From oozing forehead and the tilted cup. 
And in the hush a sobbing cry grew up : 
"My God ! You've killed him, Mike !" 



THE SHOOTING OF THE CUP 87 

Then growing loud, 
A wind of horror blew among the crowd 
And set it swirling round about the dead. 
And over all there roared a voice that said : 
"I niver mint to do it, b'ys, I swear! 
The divil's in me gun !" Men turned to stare 
Wild-eyed upon the center of that sound, 
And saw Fink dash his rifle to the ground, 
As 'twere the hated body of his wrong. 

Once more arose that wailing, like a song, 
Of one who called and called upon his friend. 



VII 

THE THIRD RIDER 

It seemed the end, and yet 'twas not the end. 

A day that wind of horror and surprise 

Blew high ; and then, as when the tempest dies 

And only aspens prattle, as they will, 

Though pines win silence and the oaks are still, 

By furtive twos and threes the talk survived. 

To some it seemed that men were longer lived 

Who quarreled not over women. Others guessed 

That love was bad for marksmanship at best — 

The nerves, you know ! Still others pointed 

out 
Why Mike should have the benefit of doubt ; 
For every man, who knew a rifle, knew 
That there were days you'd split a reed in two, 
OfF-hand at fifty paces ; then, one day. 
Why, somehow, damn your eyes, you'd blaze 

away 
And miss a bull ! No doubt regarding that ! 
"But," one replied, "'tis what you're aiming at, 
Not what you hit, determines skill, you know 1" — 
An abstract observation, apropos 



THE THIRD RIDER 89 

Of nothing in particular, but made 

As just a contribution to the trade 

Of gunnery ! And others would recall 

The center of that silence in the hall 

The night one lay there waiting, splendid, still. 

And nothing left to wait for. Poor old Bill ! 

There went a man, by God! Who knew his 

like — 
So meek in might? And some remembered 

Mike — 
The hearth-lit room — the way he came to look 
Upon that face — and how his shoulders shook 
With sobbing as he moaned : "My friend ! My 

friend 1" 

It seemed the end, and yet 'twas not the end, 
Though men cared less to know what cunning 

gnome 
Or eyeless thing of doom had ridden home 
The deadly slug. And then there came a day 
When Major Henry had a word to say 
That seemed, at last, to lay the ghost to rest. 
He meant to seek the River of the West 
Beyond the range, immensely rich in furs, 
And for the wiving prows of voyageurs 
A virgin yearning. Yonder one might ghde 
A thousand miles to sunset, where the tide 



90 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Is tempered with an endless dream of May ! 
So much and more the Major had to say — 
Words big with magic for the young men's 

ears. 
And finally he called for volunteers — 
Two men to hasten to the Moreau's mouth, 
Meet Ashley's party coming from the south 
And bid them buy more horses at the Grand 
Among the Rees. Then, pushing through the 

band, 
Mike Fink stood forth, and after him, Talbeau. 

Now Henry thought 'twere wiser they should 

go 
By land, although the river trail, he knew. 
Were better. But a wind of rumor blew 
Up stream. About the region of the Knife, 
It seemed, the Grovans tarried, nursing strife 
Because the Whites were favoring their foes 
With trade for guns; and, looking on their 

bows, 
The Grovans hated. So the rumor said. 
And thus it came to pass the new trail led 
About six days by pony to the south ; 
Thence eastward, five should find the Moreau's 

mouth 
And Ashley toiling up among the bars. 



THE THIRD RIDER 91 

The still white wind was blowing out the stars 
When yawning trappers saw the two men row 
Across the river with their mounts in tow — 
A red roan stallion and a buckskin mare. 
And now the ponies gain the far bank there 
And flounder up and shake themselves like dogs. 
And now the riders mount and breast the 

fogs 
Flung down as wool upon the flat. They dip 
And rise and float, submerging to the hip, 
Turn slowly into shadow men, and fade. 
And some have said that when the ponies neighed, 
'Twas like a strangled shriek ; and far ahead 
Some ghostly pony, ridden by the dead, 
Called onward like a bugle singing doom. 
And when the valley floor, as with a broom, 
Was swept by dawn, men saw the empty land. 

Not now the Song shall tell of Henry's band 
Ascending to the Falls, nor how they crossed 
The Blackfoot trail, nor how they fought and 

lost. 
Thrown back upon the Yellowstone to wait 
In vain for Ashley's hundred. Yonder, Fate 
Led southward through the fog, and thither 

goes 
The prescient Song. 



92 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The April sun arose 
And fell ; and all day long the riders faced 
A rolling, treeless, melancholy waste 
Of yellow grass ; for 'twas a rainless time, 
Nor had the baby green begun to climb 
The steep-kneed hills, but kept the nursing 

draws. 
And knee to knee they rode with scarce a pause, 
Save when the ponies drank ; and scarce a word, 
As though the haunting silence of a third. 
Who rode between them, shackled either tongue. 
And when along the sloughs the twilight flung 
Blue haze, and made the hills seem doubly bleak, 
They camped beside a songless little creek 
That crawled among the clumps of stunted plum 
Just coming into bud. And both sat dumb 
Beside a mewing fire, until the west 
Was darkened and the shadows leaped and pressed 
About their little ring of feeble light. 
Then, moved by some vague menace in the 

night. 
Fink forced a laugh that wasn't glad at all. 
And joked about a certain saddle gall 
That troubled him — a Rabelaisian quip 
That in the good old days had served to strip 
The drooping humor from the dourest jowl. 
He heard the laughter of the prairie owl, 



THE THIRD RIDER 93 

A goblin jeering. Gazing at the flame, 

Talbeau seemed not to hear. But when there 

came 
A cry of kiotes, peering all about 
He said : "You don't suppose they'll dig him 

out ? 
I carried heavy stones till break of day. 
You don't suppose they'll come and paw away 
The heavy stones I packed, and pester Bill ?" 
"Huh uh," Fink grunted; but the evening chill 
Seemed doubled on a sudden ; so he sought 
His blanket, wrapped it closely, thought and 

thought 
Till drowsy nonsense tumbled through his skull. 

Now at that time of night when comes a lull 
On stormy life ; when even sorrow sleeps. 
And sentinels upon the stellar steeps 
Sight morning, though the world is blind and 

dumb, 
Fink wakened at a whisper : "Mike ! He's come ! 
Look! Look!" And Mike sat up and blinked 

and saw. 
It didn't walk — it burned along the draw — 
Tall, radiantly white ! It wasn't dead — 
It smiled — it had a tin cup on its head — 
Eh ? — Gone ! 



94 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Fink stirred the embers to a flare. 
What dream was this ? The world seemed 

unaware 
That anything at all had come to pass. 
Contentedly the ponies nipped the grass 
There in the darkness ; and the night was still. 
They slept no more, but nursed the fire until 
The morning broke ; then ate and rode away. 

They weren't any merrier that day. 
And each spoke little, save when Fink would swear 
And smirch the virtue of the buckskin mare 
For picking quarrels with the roan he rode. 
(Did not the Northwind nag her like a goad, 
And was there any other horse to blame ?) 

The worried day dragged on and twilight came — 
A dusty gray. They climbed a hill to seek 
Some purple fringe of brush that marked a creek. 
The prairie seemed an endless yellow blur : 
Nor might they choose but tarry where they were 
And pass the cheerless night as best they could. 
For they had seen no water-hole or wood 
Since when the sun was halfway down the sky ; 
And there would be no stars to travel by, 
So thick a veil of dust the great wind wove. 
They staked their ponies in a leeward cove. 
And, rolling in their blankets, swooned away. 



THE THIRD RIDER 95 

Talbeau awoke and stared. 'Twas breaking 

day ! 
So soon ? It seemed he scarce had slept a wink ! 
He'd have another snooze, for surely Fink 
Seemed far from waking, sprawled upon the 

ground. 
His loose mouth gaping skyward with a sound 
As of a bucksaw grumbling through a knot. 
Talbeau dropped back and ^reamed the sun was 

hot 
Upon his face. He tried but failed to stir ; 
Whereat he knew that he was Carpenter 
And hot-breatht wolves were sniffing round his 

head ! 
He wasn't dead ! He really wasn't dead ! 
Would no one come, would no one drive them off ? 
His cry for help was nothing but a cough, 
For something choked him. Then a shrill long 

scream 
Cut knife-like through the shackles of his dream, 
And once again he saw the lurid flare 
Of morning on the hills. 

What ailed the mare ? 
She strained her tether, neighing. And the 

roan ? 
He squatted, trembling, with his head upthrown. 



96 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

And lashed his tail and snorted at the blast. 
Perhaps some prowling grizzly wandered past. 
Talbeau sat up. What stifling air ! How warm ! 
What sound was that ? Perhaps a thunder 

storm 
Was working up. He coughed ; and then it 

broke 
Upon him how the air was sharp with smoke ; 
And, leaping up, he turned and looked and knew 
What birdless dawn, unhallowed by the dew. 
Came raging from the northwest ! Half the 

earth 
And half the heavens were a burning hearth 
Fed fat with grass inflammable as tow ! 
He shook Fink, yelling : *'Mike, we've got to go ! 
All hell's broke loose!" 

They cinched the saddles on 
With hands that fumbled ; mounted and were 

gone. 
Like rabbits fleeing from a kiote pack. 
They crossed the valley, topped a rise, looked 

back. 
Nor dared to gaze. The firm, familiar world. 
It seemed, was melting down, and Chaos swirled 
Once more across the transient realms of form 
To scatter in the primal atom-storm 



THE THIRD RIDER 97 

The earth's rich dust and potency of dreams. 
Infernal geysers gushed, and sudden streams 
Of rainbow flux went roaring up the skies 
Through ghastly travesties of Paradise, 
Where, drowsy in a tropic summertide. 
Strange gaudy flowers bloomed and aged and 

died — 
Whole seasons in a moment. Bloody rain, 
Blown slant like April silver, spewed the plain 
To mock the fallow sod ; and where it fell 
Anemones and violets of hell 
Foreran the fatal summer. 

Spurs bit deep. 
Now down the hill where shadow-haunted sleep 
Fell from the broken wind's narcotic breath. 
The ponies plunged. A sheltered draw, where 

death 
Seemed brooding in the silence, heard them 

pass. 
A hollow, deep with tangled jointed grass. 
Snatched at the frantic hoofs. Now up a slope 
They clambered, blowing, at a stumbling lope 
And, reined upon the summit, wheeled to stare. 
The stallion snorted, and the rearing mare 
Screamed at the sight and bolted down the wind. 
The writhing Terror, scarce a mile behind. 



98 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Appeared to gain ; while far to left and right 
Its flanks seemed bending in upon the night — 
A ten-league python closing on its prey. 

No guiding hand was needed for the way ; 
Blind speed was all. So little Nature heeds 
The fate of men, these blew as tumbleweeds 
Before that dwarfing, elemental rage. 
A gray wolf bounded from a clump of sage ; 
A rabbit left its bunchgrass nest and ran 
Beside its foe ; and neither dreaded Man, 
The deadliest of all earth's preying things. 
A passing knoll exploded into wings. 
And prairie owls, befuddled by the light, 
Went tumbling up like patches of the night 
The burning tempest tattered. 

Leaning low. 
The gasping riders let the ponies go, 
The little buckskin leading, while the roan 
Strove hard a-flank, afraid to be alone 
And nickering at whiles. And he who led, 
By brief hypnotic lapses comforted. 
Recalled the broad Ohio, heard the horns 
The way they used to sing those summer morns 
When he and Mike and — . There the dream 

went wrong 
And through his head went running, like a song 



THE THIRD RIDER 99 

That sings itself: 'He tried so hard to come 
And warn us ; but the grave had made him dumb, 
And 'twas to show he loved us that he smiled.' 
And of the other terror made a child 
Whom often, for a panic moment's span, 
Projections from the conscience of the man 
Pursued with glaring eyes and claws of flame. 
For this the dead arose, for this he came — 
That grin upon his face ! 

A blinding gloom 
Crushed down ; then, followed by a rolling 

boom. 
There broke a scarlet hurricane of light 
That swept the farthest reaches of the night 
Where unsuspected hills leaped up aghast. 
Already through the hollow they had passed 
So recently, the hounding Terror sped ! 
And now the wind grew hotter. Overhead 
Inverted seas of color rolled and broke. 
And from the combers of the litten smoke 
A stinging spindrift showered. 

On they went. 
Unconscious of duration or extent. 
Of everything but that from which they fled. 
Now, sloping to an ancient river bed. 



loo THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The prairie flattened. Plunging downward there, 
The riders suddenly became aware 
How surged, beneath, a mighty shadow-stream — 
As though the dying Prairie dreamed a dream 
Of yesterage when all her valleys flowed 
With Amazons, and monster life abode 
Upon her breast and quickened in her womb. 
And from that rushing in the flame-smeared 

gloom 
Unnumbered outcries blended in a roar. 
The headlong ponies struck the sounding shore 
And reared upon their haunches. Far and near, 
The valley was a-flood with elk and deer 
And buffalo and wolves and antelope 
And whatsoever creature slough and slope 
Along the path of terror had to give. 
Torrential with the common will to live. 
The river of unnumbered egos swept 
The ponies with it. But the buckskin kept 
The margin where the rabble frayed and thinned 
And, breathing with the wheeze of broken wind. 
The stallion clung to her. 

It came to pass 
The valley yawned upon a sea of grass 
That seemed to heave, as waves of gloom and glare 
Ran over it; and, rising here and there, 



THE THIRD RIDER loi 

Tall buttes made islands in the living tide 

That roared about them. Still with swinging 

stride 
And rhythmic breath the little buckskin ran 
Among the herd, that opened like a fan 
And scattered. But the roan was losing ground. 
His breathing gave a gurgling, hollow sound, 
As though his life were gushing from his throat. 
His whole frame quivered like a scuttled boat 
That slowly sinks ; nor did he seem to feel 
Upon his flank the biting of the steel 
That made him bleed. Fink cut the rifle-boot 
And saddle-bags away, to give the brute 
Less burden. 

Now it happened, as they neared 
A lofty butte whose summit glimmered weird 
Beneath the lurid boiling of the sky, 
Talbeau was startled by a frantic cry 
Behind him ; noted that he rode alone, 
And, turning in the saddle, saw the roan 
Go stumbling down and wither to a heap. 
And momently, between a leap and leap, 
The love of self was mighty in the man ; 
For now the Terror left the hills and ran 
With giant strides along the grassy plains. 
Dear Yesterdays fought wildly for the reins, 



102 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

To-morrows for the spur. And then the mare 
Heeled to the sawing bit and pawed the air 
And halted, prancing. '-. 

Once again Talbeau 
Looked back to where the sparks were blown as 

snow 
Before that blizzard blast of scorching light, 
And saw Fink running down the painted night 
Like some lost spirit fleeing from the Wrath. 

One horse — and who should ride it ? All he 

hath 
A man will give for life ! But shall he give 
For living that which makes it good to live — 
The consciousness of fellowship and trust ? 
Let fools so prize a pinch of throbbing dust ! 
Now Fink should ride, and let the rest be hid. 
He bounded from the mare ; but, as he did. 
The panic-stricken pony wheeled about. 
Won freedom with a lunge, and joined the 

rout 
Of fleeing shadows. 

Well, 'twas over now — 
Perhaps it didn't matter anyhow — 
They'd go together now and hunt for Bill ! 
And momently the world seemed very still 



THE THIRD RIDER 103 

About Talbeau, Then Fink was at his side. 
Blank horror in his face. "Come on !" he cried ; 
"The butte! We'll climb the butte!" And 

once again 
Talbeau knew fear. 

Now, gripping hands, the men 
Scuttled and dodged athwart the scattered flight 
Of shapes that drifted in the flood of light, 
A living flotsam ; reached the bare butte's base, 
Went scrambling up its leaning leeward face 
To where the slope grew sheer, and huddled there. 
And hotter, hotter, hotter grew the air. 
Until their temples sang a fever tune. 
The April night became an August noon. 
Then, near to swooning in a blast of heat. 
They heard the burning breakers boom and beat 
About their lofty island, as they lay, 
Their gaping mouths pressed hard against the 

clay, 
And fought for every breath. Nor could they tell 
How long upon a blistered scarp in hell 
They gasped and clung. But suddenly at last — 
An age in passing, and a moment, passed — 
The torture ended, and the cool air came ; 
And, looking out, they saw the long slant flame 
Devour the night to leeward. 



104 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

By and by 
Drab light came seeping through the sullen sky. 
They waited there until the morning broke, 
And, like a misty moon amid the smoke. 
The sun came stealing up. 

They found a place 
Where rain had scarred the butte wall's western 

face 
With many runnels ; clambered upward there — 
And viewed a panorama of despair. 
The vAnd had died, and not a sound arose 
Above those blackened leagues ; for even crows 
(The solitude embodied in a bird) 
Had fled that desolation. Nothing stirred, 
Save here and there a thin gray column grew 
From where some draw still smouldered. And 

they knew 
How universal quiet may appal 
As violence, and, even as a wall. 
Sheer vacancy confine. 

No horse, no gun ! 
Nay, worse ; no hint of water hole or run 
In all the flat or back among the hills ! 
Mere hunger is a goad that, ere it kills. 
May drive the lean far down the hardest road : 
But thirst is both a snaffle and a load ; 



THE THIRD RIDER 105 

It gripped them now. When Mike made bold to 

speak, 
His tongue was Uke a stranger to his cheek. 
"Shure, b'y," he croaked; "'tis Sunday morn in 

hell!" 
The sound seemed profanation; on it fell 
The vast, rebuking silence. 

Long they gazed 
About them, standing silent and amazed 
Upon the summit. West and north and east 
They saw too far. But mystery, at least. 
Was in the south, where still the smoke con- 
cealed 
The landscape. Vistas of the unrevealed 
Invited Hope to stray there as it please. 
And presently there came a little breeze 
Out of the dawn. As of a crowd that waits 
Some imminent revealment of the Fates 
That toil behind the scenes, a murmur 'woke 
Amid the hollow hush. And now the smoke 
Mysteriously stirs, begins to flow, 
And giant shadow bulks that loom below 
Seem crowding dawnward. One by one they lift 
Above the reek, and trail the ragged drift 
About their flanks. A melancholy scene ! 
Gray buttes and giddy gulfs that yawn between — 



io6 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A Titan's labyrinth ! But see afar 

Where yonder canyon like a purple scar 

Cuts zigzag through the waste ! Is that a gleam 

Of water in its deeps ? 

A stream ! A stream ! 

Now scrambling down the runnels of the rain, 
They struck across the devastated plain 
Where losers of the night's mad race were strewn 
To wait the wolves and crows. 

Mid-afternoon 
Beheld them stripping at the river's bank. 
They wallowed in the turbid stream and drank 
Delicious beakers in the liquid mud ; 
Nor drank alone, for here the burning flood 
Had flung its panting driftage in the dark. 
The valley teemed with life, as though some Ark 
That rode the deluge, spewed its cargo here : 
Elk, antelope, wolves, bison, rabbits, deer. 
Owls, crows — the greatest mingled with the least. 
And when the men had drunk, they had a feast 
Of liver, bolted dripping from a cow 
Dead at the water's lip. 

Blue shadow now 
Was mounting slowly up the canyon steep ; 
So, seeking for a better place to sleep, 



THE THIRD RIDER 107 

They wandered down the margin of the stream. 

*Twas scarce more real than walking in a dream 

Of lonely craters in a lunar land 

That never thrilled with roots. On either hand 

The dwarfing summits soared, grotesque, austere, 

And jagged fissures, sentinelled with fear, 

Led back to mysteries of purple gloom. 

They came to where a coulee, like a flume. 
Rose steeply to the prairie. Thither hurled, 
A roaring freshet of the herd had swirled, 
Cascading to the river bed ; and there. 
Among the trampelled carcasses, the mare 
Lay bloated near the water. She had run 
With saddle, panniers, powder-horn and gun 
Against the wind-thewed fillies of the fire. 
And won the heat, to perish at the wire — 
A plucky little brute ! 



VIII 

VENGEANCE 

They made a camp 
Well up above the crawling valley damp, 
And where no prowling beast might chance to 

come. 
There was no fuel ; but a flask of rum, 
Thanks to the buckskin, dulled the evening chill. 
And both grew mellow. Memories of Bill 
And other nights possessed the little man ; 
And on and on his reminiscence ran, 
As 'twere the babble of a brook of tears 
Gone groping for the ocean of dead years 
Too far away to reach. And by and by 
The low voice sharpened to an anguished cry : 
"0 Mike ! I said you couldn't miss the cup !" 

Then something snapped in Fink and, leaping up. 
He seized Talbeau and shook him as a rat 
Is shaken by a dog. "Enough of that !" 
He yelled; "And, 'faith, I'll sind ye afther Bill 
Fer wan more wurrd ! Ye fool ! I mint to kill ! 
And, moind me now, ye'd better howld yer lip !" 
1 08 



VENGEANCE 109 

Talbeau felt murder shudder in the grip 

That choked and shook and flung him. Faint 

and dazed, 
He sprawled upon the ground. And anger blazed 
Within him, like the leaping Northern Light 
That gives no heat. He wished to rise and 

fight. 
But could not for the horror of it all. 
Wild voices thronged the further canyon wall 
As Fink raved on ; and every word he said 
Was like a mutilation of the dead 
By some demonic mob. 

And when at length 
He heard Mike snoring yonder, still the strength 
To rise and kill came not upon Talbeau. 
So many moments of the Long Ago 
Came pleading; and the gentle might thereof 
United with the habit of old love 
To weave a spell about the sleeping man. 
Then drowsily the pondered facts began 
To merge and group, as running colors will, 
In new and vaguer patterns. Mike and Bill 
Were bickering again. And someone said : 
"Let's flip a copper; if it's tails, he's dead ; 
If heads, he's living. That's the way to tell !" 
A spinning copper jangled like a bell. 



no THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

But even as he stooped to pick it up, 

Behold ! the coin became a whisky cup 

Bored smoothly through the center! "Look at 

this!" 
He seemed to shout: "I knew Mike couldn't 

miss ! 
Bill only played at dying for a joke !" 

Then laughter filled his dream, and he awoke. 
The dawn was like a stranger's cold regard 
Across the lifeless land, grotesquely scarred 
As by old sorrow; and the man's dull sense 
Of woe, become objective and immense, 
Seemed waiting there to crush him. 

Fink still slept ; 
And even now, it seemed, his loose mouth kept 
A shape for shameless words, as though a breath, 
Deep drawn, might set it gloating o'er the death 
Of one who loved its jesting and its song. 
And while Talbeau sat pondering the wrong 
So foully done, and all that had been killed. 
And how the laughter of the world was stilled 
And all its wine poured out, he seemed to hear 
As though a spirit whispered in his ear : 
You wont forget I gave my gun to you! 
And instantly the deep conviction grew 



VENGEANCE in 

That 'twas a plea for justice from the slain. 
Ah, not without a hand upon the rein, 
Nor with an empty saddle, had the mare 
Outrun the flame that she might carry there 
The means of vengeance ! 

Yet — if Mike were dead ! 
He shuddered, gazing where the gray sky bled 
With morning, like a wound. He couldn't kill ; 
Nor did it seem to be the way of Bill 
To bid him do it. Yet the gun was sent. 
For what ? — To make Mike suflFer and repent ? 
But how ? 

Awhile his apathetic gaze 
Explored yon thirst- and hunger-haunted maze. 
As though he might surprise the answer there. 
The answer came. That region of despair 
Should be Mike's Purgatory ! More than Chance 
Had fitted circumstance to circumstance 
That this should be ! He knew it ! And the plan. 
Thus suddenly conceived, possessed the man. 
It seemed the might of Bill had been reborn 
In him. 

He took the gun and powder horn, 
The water flasks and sun-dried bison meat 
The panniers gave ; then climbing to a seat 



112 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Above the sleeper, shouted down to him : 
"Get up !" Along the further canyon rim 
A multitude of voices swelled the shout. 
Fink started up and yawned and looked about, 
Bewildered. Once again the clamor ran 
Along the canyon wall. The little man, 
Now squinting down the pointed rifle, saw 
The lifted face go pale, the stubborn jaw 
Droop nervelessly. A twinge of pity stirred 
Within him, and he marvelled as he heard 
His own voice saying what he wished unsaid : 
"It's Bill's own rifle pointing at your head; 
Go east, and think of all the wrong you've 
done!" 

Fink glanced across his shoulder where the sun 
Shone level on the melancholy land ; 
And, feigning that he didn't understand, 
Essayed a careless grin that went awry. 
"Bejasus, and we'll not go there, me b'y," 
He said; "for shure 'tis hell widout the lights!" 
That one-eyed stare along the rifle sights 
Was narrowed to a slit. A sickening shock 
Ran through him at the clucking of the lock. 
He clutched his forehead, stammering: "Tal-' 

beau, 
I've been yer frind — . " 



VENGEANCE 113 

"I'll give you three to go," 
The other said, "or else you'll follow Bill ! 
One — two — ," 

Fink turned and scuttled down the hill ; 
And at the sight the watcher's eyes grew dim, 
For something old and dear had gone from him — 
His pride in one who made a clown of Death. 
Alas, how much the man would give for breath ! 
How easily Death made of him the clown ! 

Now scrambling for a grip, now rolling down, 

Mike landed at the bottom of the steep. 

And, plunging in the river belly deep. 

Struck out in terror for the other shore. 

At any moment might the rifle's roar 

Crash through that rearward silence, and the 

lead 
Come snarling like a hornet at his head — 
He felt the spot ! Then presently the flood 
Began to cool the fever in his blood. 
And furtive self-derision stung his pride. 
He clambered dripping up the further side 
And felt himself a fool ! He wouldn't go ! 
That little whiffet yonder was Talbeau ! 
And who was this that he, Mike Fink, had feared ? 
He'd go and see. 
I 



114 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

A spurt of smoke appeared 
Across the river, and a bullet struck — 
Spat ping — beside him, spewing yellow muck 
Upon his face. Then every clifF and draw 
Rehearsed the sullen thunders of the law 
He dared to question. Stricken strangely weak. 
He clutched the clay and watched the powder reek 
Trail ofF with glories of the level sun. 
He saw Talbeau pour powder in his gun 
And ram the wad. A second shot might kill ! 
That brooding like a woman over Bill 
Had set the fellow daft. ^ crazy man! 
The notion spurred him. Springing up, he ran 
To where a gully cleft the canyon rim 
And, with that one-eyed fury after him, 
Fled east. 

The very buttes, grotesque and weird, 
Seemed startled at the sight of what he feared 
And powerless to shield him in his need. 
'Twas more than man he fled from ; 'twas a deed, 
Become alive and subtle as the air. 
That turned upon the doer. Everywhere 
It gibbered in the echoes as he fled. 
A stream of pictures flitted through his head : 
The quiet body in the hearth-lit hall, 
The grinning ghost, the flight, the stallion's fall, 



VENGEANCE 115 

The flame girt isle, the spectral morning sun, 
And then the finding of the dead man's gun 
Beside the glooming river. Flowing by. 
These fused and focused in the deadly eye 
He felt behind him. 

Suddenly the ground 
Heaved up and smote him with a crashing 

sound ; 
And in the vivid moment of his fall 
He thought he heard the snarling rifle ball 
And felt the one-eyed fury crunch its mark. 
Expectant of the swooping of the dark. 
He raised his eyes. — The sun was shining 

still ; 
It peeped about the shoulder of a hill 
And viewed him with a quizzifying stare. 
He looked behind him. Nothing followed 

there; 
But Silence, big with dread-begotten sound, 
Dismayed him ; and the steeps that hemmed him 

round 
Seemed plotting with a more than human guile. 
He rose and fled ; but every little while 
A sense of eyes behind him made him pause; 
And always down the maze of empty draws 
It seemed a sound of feet abruptly ceased. 



ii6 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Now trotting, walking now, he labored east ; 
And when at length the burning zenith beat 
Upon him, and the summits swam with heat, 
And on the winding gullies fell no shade, 
He came to where converging gulches made 
A steep-walled basin for the blinding glare. 
Here, fanged and famished, crawled the prickly 

pear; 
Malevolent with thirst, the soap weed thrust 
Its barbed stilettos from the arid dust, 
Defiant of the rain-withholding blue : 
And in the midst a lonely scrub oak grew, 
A crooked dwarf that, in the pictured bog 
Of its own shadow, squatted like a frog. 
Fink, panting, flung himself beneath its boughs. 
A mighty magic in the noonday drowse 
Allayed the driving fear. A waking dream 
Fulfilled a growing wish. He saw the stream 
Far off as from a space-commanding height. 
And now a phantasy of rapid flight 
Transported him above the sagging land, 
And with a sudden swoop he seemed to stand 
Once more upon the shimmering river's brink. 
His eyes drank deep ; but when his mouth would 

drink, 
A giant hornet from the other shore — 
The generating center of a roar 
That shook the world — snarled by. 



VENGEANCE 117 

He started up, 
And saw the basin filling as a cup 
With purple twilight ! Gazing all around 
Where still the flitting ghost of some great sound 
Troubled the crags a moment, then was mute. 
He saw along the shoulder of a butte, 
A good three hundred paces from the oak, 
A slowly spreading streak of rifle smoke 
And knew the deadly eye was lurking there. 
He fled again. 

About him everjrwhere 
Amid the tangled draws naw growing dim, 
Weird witnesses took cognizance of him 
And told abroad the winding way he ran. 
He halted only when his breath began 
To stab his throat. And lo, the staring eye 
Was quenched with night ! No further need he 

fly 
Till dawn. And yet — . He held his breath to 

hear 
If footsteps followed. Silence smote his ear, 
The gruesome silence of the hearth-lit hall, 
More dread than sound. Against the gully wall 
He shrank and huddled with his eyes shut tight, 
For fear a presence, latent in the night. 
Should walk before him. 



ii8 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Then it seemed he ran 
Through regions aUen to the feet of Man, 
A weary way despite the speed of sleep, 
And came upon a river flowing deep 
Between black crags that made the sky a well. 
And eerily the feeble starlight fell 
Upon the flood with water lilies strown. 
But when he stooped, the stream began to moan, 
And suddenly from every lily pad 
A white face bloomed, unutterably sad 
And bloody browed. 

A swift, erasing flame 
Across the dusky picture, morning came. 
Mike lay a moment, blinking at the blue ; 
And then the fear of yesterday broke through 
The clinging drowse. For lo, on every side 
The paling summits watched him, Argus-eyed, 
In hushed anticipation of a roar. 
He fled. 

All day, intent to see once more 
The open plain before the night should fall, 
He labored on. But many a soaring wall 
Annulled some costly distance he had won ; 
And misdirected gullies, white with sun. 
Seemed spitefully to baffle his desire. 



VENGEANCE 119 

The deeps went blue ; on mimic dome and spire 

The daylight faded to a starry awe. 

Mike slept; and lo, they marched along the 

draw — 
Or rather burned — tall, radiantly white ! 
A hushed procession, tunnelling the night. 
They came, with lips that smiled and brows that 

bled. 
And each one bore a tin cup on its head, 
A brimming cup. But ever as they came 
Before him, like a draught-struck candle flame 
They shuddered and were snuffed. 

'Twas deep night yet 
When Mike awoke and felt the terror sweat 
Upon his face, the prickling of his hair. 
Afraid to sleep, he paced the gully there 
Until the taller buttes were growing gray. 
He brooded much on flowing streams that day. 
As with a weight, he stooped ; his feet were slow ; 
He shuffled. Less and less he feared Talbeau 
Behind him. More and more he feared the 

night 
Before him. Any hazard in the light. 
Or aught that might befall 'twixt living men, 
Were better than to be alone again 
And meet that dream ! 



120 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

The deeps began to fill 
With purple haze. Bewildered, boding ill, 
A moaning wind awoke. 'Twould soon be dark. 
Mike pondered. Twice Talbeau had missed the 

mark. 
Perhaps he hadn't really meant to hit. 
And surely now that flaring anger fit 
Had burned away. It wasn't like the man 
To hold a grudge. Mike halted, and began 
To grope for words regretful of the dead, 
Persuasive words about a heart that bled 
For Bill. 'Twas all a terrible mistake. 
"Plasenow, a little dhrop fer owld toime's sake !" 
With troublesome insistence, that refrain 
Kept running through the muddle of his brain 
And disarranged the words he meant to speak. 
The trickle of a tear along his cheek 
Consoled him. Soon his suffering would end. 
Talbeau would see him weeping for his friend — 
Talbeau had water ! 

Now the heights burned red 
To westward. With a choking clutch of dread 
He noted how the dusk was gathering 
Along the draws — a trap about to spring. 
He cupped his hands about his mouth and cried : 
"Talbeau! Talbeau!" Despairing voices died 



VENGEANCE 121 

Among the summits, and the lost wind pined. 
It made Talbeau seem infinitely kind — 
The one thing human in a ghostly land. 
Where was he ? Just a touch of that warm hand 
Would thwart the dark ! Mike sat against a wall 
And brooded. 

By and by a skittering fall 
Of pebbles at his back aroused the man. 
He scrambled to his feet and turned to scan 
The butte that sloped above him. Where the 

glow 
Still washed the middle height, he saw Talbeau 
Serenely perched upon a ledge of clay ! 
And Mike forgot the words he meant to say, 
The fitted words, regretful of his deed. 
A forthright, stark sincerity of need 
Rough hewed the husky, incoherent prayer 
He shouted to that Lord of water there 
Above the gloom. A little drop to drink 
For old time's sake ! 

Talbeau regarded Fink 
Awhile in silence; then his thin lips curled. 
"You spilled the only drink in all the world ! 
Go on," he said, "and think of what you've 

done!" 
Beyond the pointed muzzle of his gun 



122 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

He saw the big man wither to a squat 
And tremble, like a bison when the shot 
Just nips the vital circle. Then he saw 
A stooping figure hurry down the draw, 
Grow dim, and vanish in the failing light. 

'Twas long before Talbeau could sleep that night. 
Some questioner, insistently perverse, 
Assailed him and compelled him to rehearse 
The justifying story of the friend 
Betrayed and slain. But when he reached the 

end. 
Still unconvinced the questioner was there 
To taunt him with that pleading of despair — 
For old time's sake ! Sleep brought him little 

rest; 
For what the will denied, the heart confessed 
In mournful dreams. And when the first faint 

gray 
Aroused him, and he started on his way. 
He knew the stubborn questioner had won. 
No brooding on the wrong that Mike had done 
Could still that cry: "Plase now, fer owld 

toime's sake, 
A little dhrop !" It made his eyeballs ache 
With tears of pity that he couldn't shed. 
No other dawn, save that when Bill lay dead 



VENGEANCE 123 

And things began to stare about the hall, 
Had found the world so empty. After all, 
What man could know the way another trod ? 
And who was he, Talbeau, to play at God ? 
Let one who curbs the wind and brews the 

rain 
Essay the subtler portioning of pain 
To souls that err ! Talbeau would make amends ! 
Once more they'd drink together and be friends. 
How often they had shared ! 

He struck a trot. 
Eyes fixed upon the trail. The sun rose hot ; 
Noon poured a blinding glare along the draws; 
And still the trail led on, without a pause 
To show where Mike had rested. Thirst began 
To be a burden on the little man ; 
His progress dwindled to a dragging pace. 
But when he tipped the flask, that pleading 

face '"\ " 

Arose before him, and a prayer denied 
Came mourning back to thrust his need aside — 
A little drop ! How Mike must suffer now I 
" I'm not so very thirsty, anyhow," 
He told himself. And almost any bend 
Might bring him on a sudden to his friend. 
He'd wait and share the water. 



124 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

Every turn 
Betrayed a hope. The west began to burn ; 
Flared red ; went ashen ; and the stars came out. 
Dreams, colored by an unacknowledged doubt, 
Perplexed the trail he followed in his sleep ; 
And dreary hours before the tallest steep 
Saw dawn, Talbeau was waiting for the day. 

Till noon he read a writing in the clay 

That bade him haste ; for now from wall to wall 

The footmarks wandered, like the crabbed scrawl 

An old man writes. They told a gloomy tale. 

And then the last dim inkling of a trail 

Was lost upon a patch of hardened ground ! 

The red west saw him, like a nervous hound 
That noses vainly for the vanished track, 
Still plunging into gullies, doubling back, 
And pausing now and then to hurl a yell 
Among the ululating steeps. Night fell. 
The starlit buttes still heard him panting by, 
And summits weird with midnight caught his cry 
To answer, mocking. 

Morning brought despair; 
Nor did he get much comfort of his prayer : 
"God, let me find him 1 Show me where to go !" 
Some greater, unregenerate Talbeau 



VENGEANCE 125 

Was God that morning ; for the lesser heard 
His own bleak answer echoed word for word : 
Go on, and think of all the wrong you've done ! 

His futile wish to hasten sped the sun. 

That day, as he recalled it in the dark, 

Was like the spinning of a burning arc. 

He nodded, and the night was but a swoon ; 

And morning neighbored strangely with the noon ; 

And evening was the noon's penumbral haze. 

No further ran the reckoning of days. 

'Twas evening when at last he stooped to stare 

Upon a puzzling trail. A wounded bear, 

It seemed, had dragged its rump across the sands 

That floored the gullies now. But sprawling 

hands 
Had marked the margin ! Why was that ? No 

doubt 
Mike too had tarried here to puzzle out 
What sort of beast had passed. And yet — how 

queer — 
'Twas plain no human feet had trodden here ! 
A trail of hands ! That throbbing in his brain 
Confused his feeble efforts to explain ; 
And hazily he wondered if he slept 
And dreamed again. Tenaciously he kept 



126 THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS 

His eyes upon the trail and labored on, 
Lest, swooping like a hawk, another dawn 
Should snatch that hope away. 

A sentry crow. 
Upon a sunlit summit, saw Talbeau 
And croaked alarm. The noise of many wings. 
In startled flight, and raucous chatterings 
Arose. What feast was interrupted there 
A little way ahead ? 'Twould be the bear! 
He plodded on. The intervening space 
Sagged under him ; and, halting at the place 
Where late the flock had been, he strove to break 
A grip of horror. Surely now he'd wake 
And see the morning quicken in the skies ! 

The thing remained ! — It hadn't any eyes — 
The pilfered sockets bore a pleading stare ! 

A long, hoarse wail of anguish and despair 
Aroused the echoes. Answering, arose 
Once more the jeering chorus of the crows. 



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" The language is so harmonious, so picturesque ; the situations 
unfold with such vivid force and so much naturalness; and the 
tragic and the lovely, the awful and the contemptible, are so unerr- 
ingly contrasted that there is nothing to do but read, breathlessly, 
stirred completely out of oneself by the tale." — Brooklyn Eagle. 

" Four poets made 1915 the most memorable year in recent 
American literature — if not in the whole range of American letters. 
These men are Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, Lincoln Colcord, 
and John G. Neihardt. ... I believe Neihardt's poem is the biggest 
ofthefom'. . . . ' The Song of Hugh Glass ' is the really great poem 
of the year. The ' Crawl ' is one of the most remarkable things in 
American history; and Neihardt's description has given it a poetic 
immortahty that will enshrine it in our hearts forever." — JOHN 
Wilson Townsend in The Lexington (A>.) Leader. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

PubliaherB 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



MASEFIELD'S COLLECTED WORKS 

The Poems and Plays of John Mase- 
neld : Volume I, Poems; Volume II, Plays 

Decorated cloth, Each Volume, $2./^; Set, $s.oo 

This is what many people have long been desiring, a collected 
edition of the works of Masefield, including everything that the dis- 
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verse. 

Here will be found " The Everlasting Mercy," and " The Widow 
in the Bye Street," "The Daffodil Fields," and other of the great 
contributions on which he gained his first popularity, as well as 
those shorter pieces which have heretofore been published only in 
limited editions. 

The volumes have been carefully made, and purely from the 
bookmaking standpoint, will be a worthwhile addition to any library. 

SARA TEASD ALE'S NEW POEMS 

Love Songs 

Cloth, $i.2s 

" Sara Teasdale has won her way to the front rank of living 
American poets. Her career is beginning, but her work shows a 
combination of strengfth and grace that many a master might envy." 

— William Lyon Phelps in " The Advance of Poetry in the 
Twentieth Century. " 

" This singer does not know how to be affected. The sincerity of 
her poems, their clearness and their intellectual level are related to 
a fine courage that is always present. It is delightful to get a book 
of poems that have come out of the heart." — PaDRAIC Colum in 
The New Republic, 

Rivers to the Sea 

Cloth, %i.25 

" ' Rivers to the Sea ' is the best book of pure lyrics that has ap- 
peared in English since A. E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad.'" — 
William Marion Reedy in The Mirror. 

"Sara Teasdale has a genius for song, for the perfect lyric, in 
which the words seem to have fallen into place without an effort." 

— Louis Untermeyer, in The Chicago Evening Post. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publisbers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



HERMANN HAGEDORN'S NEW POEM 

Hymn of Free Peoples Triumphant 

By HERMANN HAGEDORN 

Boards, ^.yg 

It is of Victory that Mr. Hagedorn sings in this book, the 
Victory that has crowned the fearful and wonderful struggles of 
the past four years. While it is with the present hour and pres- 
ent interests that the author is concerned, there is something in 
his manner of writing suggestive of Biblical literature. — a strong 
Anglo-Saxon quality which gives force and color to the story of 
the strivings of the peoples of the earth to overthrow an evil 
power. 

AMY LOWELL'S NEW POEMS 

Can Grande's Castle 

Second Edition, ^1.50 

"We have come to it — once Poe was the living and com- 
manding poet, whose things were waited for. . . . Now we 
watch and wait for Amy Lowell's poems. Success justifies her 
work. Miss Lowell is our poet — now, between fire and fire, or, 
in plain fact, between the aesthetic passion of this particular 
epoch of letters and the next. Each separate poem in ' Can 
Grande's Castle ' is a real and true poem of remarkable power 
— a work of imagination, a moving and beautiful thing." — 
Joseph E. Chamberlain, in the Boston Transcript. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

FubUshers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



IMPORTANT NEW POETRY 

THE DRUMS IN OUR STREET : A Book of War Poems 

By MARY CAROLYN DAVIES 

%1.25 
When some of these poems appeared in American magazines, they awak- 
ened an immediate response in the hearts of American men and women 
everywhere. They tell of the war as it comes to the women who stay at 
home. They are personal and sincere and have grace of imagination and 
phrase. 

TOWARD THE GULF. By EDGAR LEE MASTERS 

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THE NEW POETRY : An Anthology 

By HARRIET MONROE and ALICE CORBIN HENDERSEN 

^1-75 
" Distinctly a book worth having — filled with beauty and excellence." — 
New York Times. 

POEMS. By RALPH HODGSON 

Zi.oo 
Recently awarded the Edward de Polignac Prize for Poetry, Ralph Hodg- 
son is already well known in this country. 

"'Eve' . . , the most fascinating poem of our time." — Nation. 

REINCARNATIONS. By JAMES STEPHENS 

%i.oo 
"A thoroughly original and unique vein in modern poetry." — Boston 

Transcript. 
"A wonderful sheaf of verse — the finest he has given us since he first 

burst upon us gaily and riotously, in his Insurrections." — The Dial. 

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WILFRED WILSON GIBSON 
(1904-1917) 

With frontispiece portrait of the author 

%2.25 
" Mr. Gibson is a genuine singer of his own day and turns into appealing 
harmony the world's jarring notes of poverty and pain." — The Outlook. 

THE CHINESE NIGHTINGALE. By VACHEL LINDSAY 

%1.25 
This is Mr. Lindsay's first volume of poems since " The Congo." The 
title piece is a very remarkable and much discussed " prize poem." Some 
of them he has employed with great success on his own lecture tours. 

TWENTY. By STELLA BENSON 

%o.8o 
" A writer of distinct promise, capable of a delightful whimsicality and 
keen satire." — Daily Graphic (London). 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

PubliBhero 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 














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